CURRENTS AND EDDIES 

IN THE 

ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 



Currents and Eddies 



in the 



English Romantic Generation 

By Frederick E. Pierce, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of English in 
Yale University 




CS(ew Haven 
Yale University Press 

London: Humphrey Milford 
Oxford University Press 

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COPYRIGHT 1918, BY 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



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PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION 
ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF 

HENRY WELDON BARNES 

OF THE CLASS OF 1882, YALE COLLEGE 



The present volume is the sixth work published by the Yale University 
Press on the Henry Weldon Barnes Memorial Publication Fund. This 
Foundation was established June 16, 1913, by a gift made to Yale Univer- 
sity by the late William Henry Barnes, Esq., of Philadelphia, in memory 
of his son, a member of the Class of 1882, Yale College, who died December 
3, 1882. While a student at Yale, Henry Weldon Barnes was greatly 
interested in the study of literature and in the literary activities of the 
college of his day, contributing articles to some of the undergraduate 
papers and serving on the editorial board of the Yale Record. It had been 
his hope and expectation that he might in after life devote himself to 
literary work. His untimely death prevented the realization of his hopes; 
but by the establishment of the Henry Weldon Barnes Memorial 
Publication Fund his name will nevertheless be forever associated with 
the cause of scholarship and letters which he planned to serve and which 
he loved so well. 



PREFACE 

If literary history is exclusively the interpretation of great literature, 
it should confine itself to masters and masterpieces. But if it be also 
a lesson from past ages for our own, it must interpret those minor 
figures who, more than the giants, because they are more numerous 
and pliant, form the thought currents of the day. And if, further, 
history be a panorama of the human drama called life, who would 
reject entirely the comedy of the vain poetaster or the tragedy of 
the broken minor who was, the great poet who might have been? 
We make no pretence of having allotted space to each author in 
exact proportion to his literary merits, arid we know that we have 
mentioned several people whom it is better to read about than to 
read. But it was only by this means, we thought, that we could 
present a brilliant transitional age in its habit as it lived. If we have 
said more about the environment of poets than about the magic 
qualities of their verse, it is because the latter task has already been 
so well done by Professor Beers, Professor Elton, Mr. Arthur 
Symons, and others. May this book throw a little light on those 
ill-understood forces at work in life, some for the encouragement — 
too many for the destruction — of incipient poetry. 

F. E. P. 
August, 191 8. 



[ 7 ] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ......... ii 

PART I 

English Literature during the French Revolution and the Career 
of Napoleon, 178Q-1815 

Chapter I. Popular Taste and Tendencies, 1 789-1804 . . 19 
Chapter II. The Eddy Around Bristol; Rousseau and the 

French Revolution in Poetry, 1794-1799 . , 43 
Chapter III. The Scotch Group and the Antiquarian Movement 

in Poetry, 1800- 1805 and thereafter . . 68 
Chapter IV. Poets and Authors of the Lakes ... 89 
Chapter V. The Popular Supremacy of Scott, 1805- 181 2 . 112 
Chapter VI. The London Society Poets: The Popular Suprem- 
acy of Byron, 1812-1820 .... 128 

PART II 

English Literature from the Downfall of Napoleon to the Rise 
of Tennyson, 1816-1830 



Chapter 


VII. 


The Scotch Era of Prose, 1814-1830 . 


151 


Chapter 


VIII. 


The Eddy Around Leigh Hunt .... 


163 


Chapter 


IX. 


The Elizabethan Current and The London Maga- 








zine ........ 


186 


Chapter 


X. 


The Expatriated Poets and the Italian Movement 








in Poetry ....... 


212 


Chapter 


XL 


Popular Taste and Minor Tendencies, 181 5-1830 


239 


Chapter 


XII. 


Forty Years of Satire, Parody, and Burlesque 

PART III 

General Discussions 


265 


Chapter 


XIII. 


Romanticism, Classicism, and Realism 


287 


Chapter 


XIV. 


The Survival of the Fittest .... 
[9 ] 


304 



INTRODUCTION 

Between 1795 and 1820 there was among German authors an easily 
traceable movement, known as that of the Romantische Schule. It 
had a definite propaganda, a definite body of contemporary enemies, 
created a definite type of literature; and in spite of rather undig- 
nified civil strife among its different camps during the period of 
decline, it had in general a social unity and organization like that of 
a political party. Still more was this true of the romantic movement 
in France between 1820 and 1840. There Victor Hugo organized and 
rallied his literary followers like a political leader; and the militant 
romanticist cried: "He who is not for me is against me." The line 
of demarcation between romanticist and classicist was clearly drawn, 
and the main unquestioned line of cleavage. 

Some of the same forces which produced these movements on the 
continent were at work in England. Yet the resulting phenomena 
were different. The Anglo-Saxon mind is in many ways centrifugal 
where French or German tendencies are centripetal. In a matter like 
literature, where there is no great external danger to repress its 
natural inclination, it does not lend itself readily to a nation-wide, 
homogeneous reform; and for this reason one finds in England a 
romantic generation, a gradual evolution in taste; but no one domi- 
nant romantic movement. Instead there were a series of minor im- 
pulses or camps, often hostile to each other, all presenting certain 
elements which critics have called "romantic" mixed with others 
which are doubtfully so. As a result, no matter what definition of 
romanticism be adopted, it is impossible to make the cleavage 
between romantic and unromantic poetry coincide with the line of 
division created by social affiliations or by conflicting theories of 
literary art. Would not every one call the "Christabel" of Coleridge 
and the "Giaour" of Byron romantic? Yet Coleridge and Byron 

[ II ] 



INTRODUCTION 

belonged to different literary camps, at times condemned each other's 
poetry, and preached different critical theories. Keats was a romantic 
poet; yet the most savage review that he ever received appeared in 
Blackwood's, a magazine favorable to romantic criticism and well 
filled with romantic fiction. 

Hence, gentle reader — and ungentle reviewer — we endeavor to 
drop, as far as possible, the words "romanticism" and "classicism" 
and to study the phenomena of the so-called romantic generation as 
those of an age marked by great variations in taste and by varying 
tendencies in creative work. The words "romanticism" and "roman- 
tic school" were often used by French and German writers of the 
early nineteenth century to describe their own literatures, and by 
English writers describing continental authors; but — and this is 
significant — those terms were rarely employed by Englishmen of 
that period describing any one social circle among their own con- 
temporary writers. They constantly spoke of landscapes as roman- 
tic, often of some book as a romantic work, but almost never of any 
group of writers as "the romantic group." Instead of Die Roman- 
tiker or Les romantiques Englishmen referred to "The Lake Poets," 
"The Scotch Poets," "The Cockney Group," "The Suburban Group," 
and "The New School of Poetry." Such labeling, however inaccurate 
in details, recognized the central fact that English poetry was being 
shaped, not by one movement, but by several; and that, even when 
a common thread of romanticism can be traced across them, it lies 
tangent to a number of circles, not coincident with any one. Is it not, 
then, desirable to resurrect the attitude of the romantic generation 
toward itself, to trace these different minor movements, to point out 
the lines of division between them with such differences as existed in 
the character of their poetry, and to explain these differences, as far 
as seems reasonable, by the effect of social and geographical environ- 
ment, of racial instincts, and of other forming influences? If such a 
procedure jars on any one as too scientific, too contrary to the sub- 
jective workings of the poetic temperament, we can only answer in 
the words of the most purely lyric mind of the nineteenth century. 
"Poets," wrote Shelley, "the best of them, are a very cameleonic 
race; they take the colour not only of what they feed on, but of the 

[ 12 ] 



INTRODUCTION 

very leaves under which they pass." Byron must have believed the 
same when he wrote: 

And as the soil is, so the heart of man. 

Our interest lies mainly in the years between 1790 and 1830; 
but a brief glance at literary tendencies in the preceding century 
is a necessary preliminary. The school of Pope, which monopolized 
English poetry before 1720 and was probably the most power- 
ful single influence for nearly a century after that date, was essen- 
tially urban, like the French neo-classicism from which it derived 
and which had originated in Paris, the most cosmopolitan city of 
Europe. It is true that the Augustan couplet became a social fad, 
and as such produced occasional fifth-rate poetasters in Highland 
wilds or western colonies; but the Pope imitators rarely achieved 
even third-rate excellence except around London. They had little to 
do with either the rural districts or the smaller provincial cities. 
The Pope tradition, though it overawed all Great Britain for a cen- 
tury and a half, was essentially a London tradition, elsewhere a 
theory much reverenced and little or clumsily practiced, in the great 
metropolis a living force even eighty years after the death of its 
founder. Edinburgh, though it had many critical advocates for Pope, 
produced little good poetry in his vein. Of the eighteenth-century 
poems in J. G. Wilson's "Poets and Poetry of Scotland," only a small 
minority are in the couplet. Blank verse, ballad metre, and Spense- 
rian stanza predominate. Even of the work in Pope's metre given 
there, much is unlike him in spirit and manner; he can claim, at best, 
only a superficial connection with the homely cottage atmosphere 
of Ramsay or the ocean breezes and adventures of Falconer. 

The varied human background must be remembered in studying 
literary currents of the eighteenth century. Before 1740 practically 
all "romantic" or un-Popean verse of merit came either from the 
wild landscapes of Scotland, which Wordsworth called, "not except- 
ing the Alps, the most poetical country I ever traveled through," or 
from the Celtic blood of Wales and Ireland. Parnell was an Irish- 
man, in whose "Fairy Tale" and "Night Piece on Death" the Celtic 
temperament shook its neo-classic dykes. Dyer, whose "Grongar 

[ 13 ] 



INTRODUCTION 

Hill" is so unlike Pope's pallid pentameter pastorals, was Welsh, and 
James Thomson a Scotch country boy, raised amid the scenery that 
later encouraged the Waverley novels. His "Seasons," though written 
in England, is redolent of the north. Blair, author of "The Grave," 
a poem in which heavy didacticism and fitful bursts of uncannily 
suggestive poetry are strangely mingled, was a Scotch clergyman. 

Even after 1740 the new types of poetry flourished best north of 
the Tweed. Beattie, whose "Minstrel" first made the sentimental- 
medieval poem popular, was the countryman of Thomson; and 
Macpherson, author of those Ossianic adaptations which leavened 
the literatures of all western Europe, was a Gaelic Highlander. John 
Home — whose medieval "Douglas," with its romantic lost heir, held 
the stage for over half a century — was Scotch. The folk poetry 
which Thomas Percy edited in his epoch-making "Reliques" came 
chiefly from the border region between Yorkshire and Edinburgh. 
It was the northern kingdom that crowned all by producing Burns 
with the wild witchery of "Tam O'Shanter" and the rollicking 
realism of "The Jolly Beggars." What "unclassical" poetry was 
produced in England before 1780 was largely a by-product of 
scholarly thought in the great universities; Oxford contributing the 
medieval poems of Thomas Warton, and Cambridge the Welsh and 
Scandinavian translations of Gray. Collins, Cowper, and Chatterton, 
though English, were not London men by birth, literary training, 
or inspiration; their brief residences in the great metropolis brought 
to the first two bitterness and disillusion — to the last tragedy. "I 
live here almost at a distance of sixty miles from London, which I 
have not visited these eight-and-twenty years, and probably never 
shall again," wrote Cowper in the height of his literary fame. 
Blake's body, it is true, was in the metropolis but his soul in "eter- 
nity." Up to the very end of the eighteenth century, medievalism, 
lyric passion, and poetical nature worship belonged to the outlying 
regions. Meanwhile in London Johnson, Goldsmith, and Churchill 
kept the old tradition of pentameter couplet, moralizing, and satire, 
unbroken. There would be a reasonable amount of truth — though 
not scientific accuracy of statement — in comparing the Pope School 
to a literary invasion from France, which conquered much the same 

[ 14 ] 



INTRODUCTION 

ground as Agricola and his Romans, then was gradually pushed 
backward from the north and west, but held firmly in its fortress by 
the Thames almost until Tennyson's day. 

It was the natural outcome of eighteenth-century tendencies that 
the beginnings of the great nineteenth-century poetry appeared 
on the very outskirts of England proper, on the Scotch border, in 
the neighboring Lake region, or round Bristol in the west at the edge 
of Wales. Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey wrote on a 
literary frontier. Not only did it mark the limit where Pope's in- 
fluence among creative geniuses had always grown weak, but it 
marked also the division between a country peopled almost wholly 
by Anglo-Saxons and outlying districts with a strong infusion of 
Celtic or Scandinavian blood. Scott led an incursion from the rugged 
and martial north in the track of Thomson, Beattie, Home, and 
Macpherson; Coleridge one from the mystery-haunted west of the 
Celt in the steps of Parnell, Dyer, and Chatterton. Before discussing 
the early writing of these great innovators, however, it will be neces- 
sary to review other works of their time, much inferior in merit, but 
far more in the public eye during the year of our Lord eighteen 
hundred. 



[ IS ] 



PART I 

ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE FRENCH 

REVOLUTION AND THE CAREER OF 

NAPOLEON, 1789-1815 



CHAPTER I 

Popular Taste and Tendencies, 1789-1804 



Sharp and dramatic is the distinction between literary movements in 
the creative work of genius and literary movements in popular taste. 
In both fields changes are forever going on; sometimes along parallel 
lines, as when Lamartine's richly lyrical "Meditations Poetiques" 
sold forty thousand copies in France in ten years; sometimes along 
lines woefully divergent, as when Shelley's noble lyrics were over- 
looked by a world eager for the sugared trash of Letitia Landon; 
sometimes of two simultaneous great creative movements one coin- 
cides with the new wave of popular feeling and the other not, as 
when Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel" became a best seller while 
Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" obtained 
from his audience nothing but "a sleep and a forgetting." Popular 
movements, unlike creative ones, seldom have an artistic interest, 
but they have a pronounced psychological one; literary history as an 
interpretation of great masterpieces ignores them, but literary his- 
tory as a study of the human mind learns from them how man, proud 
man, tricked out in a little brief applause. 

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, 
As make the angels weep. 

The initial work of the first great nineteenth-century poets only 
in a slight degree represented the prevailing taste of the time or 
appealed to it. To learn what books the general public liked during 
those eventful years from 1790 to 1804 we must open volumes long 
since thick with the dust of oblivion. 

Of popular poetry heralding the new age, very little appeared for 

[ 19 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the first time between 1790 and 1800, but several such poems, first 
launched in the preceding decade, were going from edition to edition, 
and molding the general taste. The sonnet, which had been revived 
by Warton, became a best seller in the hands of Mrs. Charlotte 
Smith, whose little fourteen-line sheaves of lacrymosity ran through 
nine editions between 1784 and 1800. An illustrated edition the year 
before the "Lyrical Ballads" numbered among its subscribers the 
archbishop of Canterbury, Cowper, Charles James Fox, Horace 
Walpole, Mrs. Siddons, and both the Wartons. Mrs. Smith led a 
hard and industrious life. She brought into the world twelve children 
and a somewhat larger number of novels, both types of offspring 
being now equally dead. In her sonnets a few drops of genuine 
poetry are lost in a bath of tears. What she said of Solitude the 
reader would like to say of her: 

Amidst thy wild-woods, and untrodden glades, 
No sounds but those of melancholy move; 

And the low winds that die among thy shades, 
Seem like soft Pity's sighs for hopeless love! 

In 1789 another disciple of Warton, William Bowles, first printed 
sonnets that ran to five editions in six years, and exercised a marked 
influence on the young authors afterwards known as "the Lake 
Poets." His effusions are much better than those of Charlotte Smith; 
but we question whether the general public realized that. It found 
in both the same wind sighing through the withered leaves, the same 
mellow pentameter sighing through withered hopes; and it bought 
and praised, and asked nothing further. In fact, though Bowles is 
more genuine and musical, he seems at times like an echo of his 
sister in popularity: 

There is strange music in the stirring wind. 
When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone 
To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone, 

Whose ancient trees on the rough slope reclined 
Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sear. 

"Charlotte Smith and Bowles are they who first made the sonnet 
popular among the present English." So wrote Coleridge in 1797 in 

[ 20 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

the Introduction to his own imitations of Bowles. It is something to 
see a nation reawakened to the value of a noble verse form, even if 
inadequately handled. 

During the same period one truly great poem was widely popular, 
Cowper's "Task." Originally printed in 1785, it was running through 
edition after edition during the last decade of the century, and is said 
to have netted the publisher some £10,000. Within six years an 
American edition appeared in New York. It is a strange thing amid 
all the fictitious woes of that tearful period that so wholesome and 
calm a poem should come from the greatest sufferer of the age; 
stranger yet that the public which liked Charlotte Smith and Hayley 
liked even better this revelation of the divine in humble life. William 
Gilpin in pamphlet after pamphlet was preaching the beauty of 
natural scenery; Methodism was spreading and increasing the reli- 
gious emotion to which Cowper so powerfully though unostenta- 
tiously appealed; and "The Task" met these new needs without 
jarring on the old conventions. Charlotte Smith in 1793 published 
a very bad imitation of it, and in her Preface waxed enthusiastic 
over the hour "when, in the Parliament of England, the greatest 
Orator of our time quoted the sublimest of our Poets — when the 
eloquence of Fox did justice to the genius of Cowper." 

The division between popular and unpopular poetry did not at all 
run parallel to the division between "romantic" and "neo-classical" 
verse. While Cowper was on every tongue, the wild, splendid lyrics 
of William Blake were falling from his improvised press utterly 
unheeded. While the medieval picturesque was everywhere wel- 
comed in Bowles, the medieval poems of Chatterton, according to 
Coleridge, "were never popular. . . . The sale was never very 
great." Burns was having a decided vogue in Lowland Scotland, but 
no such national success as the author of "The Task." The neo- 
classical early poems of Cowper fell dead, while those of lesser con- 
temporaries sold everywhere. What the public demanded was the 
sentimental and the obvious, free from unusual language or mystic 
thought, with a decent pretence of respect, at least, for the old 
literary conventions. 

[ 21 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

II 

After 1 790 far-reaching influences on poetry overflowed from two 
other popular currents: the modified Pope tradition, and German 
or Gothic melodrama. The Pope tradition, which ran lucid and 
sparkling in earlier years, grew turbid and tear-stained now; but 
it kept the time-hallowed couplet, it was either moralizing or satiri- 
cal; and, whatever Pope himself would have thought, authors and 
readers alike believed that it was modeled on him. 

In the south of England William Hayley, the friend of Cowper 
and well-meaning but very patronizing patron of Blake, between 
1775 and 1785 produced a series of poems in this vein. Despite 
hollow echoes of new influences, there is no question about his con- 
scious discipleship in following the author of "The Dunciad," whom 
he sees 

tho' formed to fill the epic throne. 
Decline the sceptre of that wide domain, 
To bear a Lictor's rod in Satire's train. 

A modern ear can scarcely endure these didactic couplets, chiming 
on drearily about painting, epic poetry, married life, and the joys 
of a placid disposition; yet they gave the author a decided vogue 
for some years at the very time when Wordsworth and Coleridge 
were beginning to write. Hayley's best-known poem, "The Triumphs 
of Temper," published in 1781, had reached a twelfth edition by 
1803. "His observation of the various effects of spleen on the 
female character, induced him to believe that he might render an 
important service to social life, if his poetry could induce his young 
and fair readers to cultivate the gentle qualities of the heart, and 
maintain a constant flow of good humor. With this view he composed 
his 'Triumphs of Temper,' and the success of it appears to have 
been fully equal to his most sanguine expectations. He has been 
heard to declare, that the sweetest reward he ever received as an 
author, was a cordial declaration from a very good and sensible 
mother of a large family, that she was truly indebted to the work 
in question, for an absolute and delightful reformation in the con- 
duct and character of her eldest daughter." Hayley was a powerful, 

[ 22 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

hard-riding athlete, utterly unlike his verse, which was obviously 
the result of a convention, not a conviction. "He had his day, too, 
poor man," was Mary Mitford's comment in 1811. "But the wonder 
with him is, not that he was dethroned, but that he was ever elevated 
to the high seat of poesy." 

Meanwhile in central England the altar of Pope burned brightly 
for the literary coterie at Lichfield: Thomas Day, the author of 
"Sandford and Merton," Anna Seward, the Swan of Lichfield, 
Erasmus Darwin, and their friends. One year after "The Triumphs 
of Temper" appeared "Louisa: a Poetical Novel," by Anna Seward. 
It exhibited a mawkish sentimentality that the author of "The 
Dunciad" would have loathed and lashed, yet resulted, according 
to the authoress, "from an idea of it being possible to unite the 
impassioned fondness of Pope's 'Eloisa' with the chaster tenderness 
of Prior's 'Emma.' " 

Now glooms on the stain'd page the barbarous Truth, 
And blights each blooming promise of my youth! 
EuGENio married! — ^Anguish, and Despair, 
In ev'ry pompous killing letter glare 1 

Yet this precious stuff ran through five editions in a decade, the 
last appearing shortly before Wordsworth's "Evening Walk"; and 
Southey tells us that in 1796 the Swan of Lichfield was "in high 
reputation." Even in 1807 she quoted with apparent approval the 
astounding dictum of Thomas Day, "that Pope's Homer was, as 
poetry, very superior to its original." 

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the famed expounder of evolu- 
tion, had a far more commanding intellect than Hayley, but was 
hardly a better poet. Being an enthusiastic scientist, he personified 
flowers and other natural forces and told the story of their fancied 
loves with ponderous gambols of his great but unpoetical mind like 
the mirth-provoking antics of Milton's elephant. In metre and didac- 
ticism he was of the school of Pope; but that sane and tasteful 
genius would have shuddered to own his child. It was thus that 
Darwin painted amours between vegetables in his "Loves of The 
Plants" (1789): 

[ 23 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

With charms despotic fair Chondrilla reigns 
O'er the soft hearts of five fraternal swains; 
If sighs the changeful nymph, alike they mourn; 
And, if she smiles, with rival raptures burn. 

In him "poetic diction," reinforced by grandiose and technical scien- 
tific expressions, becomes a purulent disease, which must have gone 
far in drawing from Wordsworth those famous Prefaces a decade 
later. 

Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd 

Rose the bright spheres which form the circling world ; 

Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst, 

And second planets issued from the first. 

Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth, 

Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth; 

Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves 

Organic life began beneath the waves. 

First heat from chemic dissolution springs, 

And gives to matter its eccentric wings; 

With strong repulsion parts the exploding mass. 

Melts into lymph or kindles into gas. 

Darwin's poems had no such sale as those of Hayley and others to be 
mentioned later — though they sold much better than "Lyrical 
Ballads" — but they were widely known and discussed. Ten years 
after the first of them appeared, literary men considered it an honor 
to the young poet Campbell to call him "the Erasmus Darwin of 
Edinburgh." Horace Walpole found in them "twelve verses" which 
he thought "the most sublime passages in any author, or in any of 
the few languages with which I am acquainted." With different feel- 
ings toward the popular favorite, William Taylor in 1796 warned 
Scott that "this age leans too much to the Darwin style." 

While Hayley, Seward, and Darwin were being humorous in an 
attempt to be serious, intentional wit in what seemed at least the 
same literary channel was carrying the market by storm. "The Rol- 
liad," published 1784 and afterwards, and not in complete form until 
1795, exhausted twenty-one editions before the end of the century. 
This work is at once a burlesque of the bad Pope imitations, and an 

[ 24] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

example of the good ones. It is a long, mock-heroic criticism in prose 
of an imaginary epic, "The Rolliad," in heroic couplets. Plentiful 
extracts from the supposed poem are quoted, none of them with 
Pope's stylistic finish, but many delicious take-offs, others full of 
pungent satire, as in the lines on George Selwyn. 

A plenteous magazine of retail wit 
Vamp'd up at leisure for some future hit; 
Cut for supposed occasions, like the trade. 
Where old new things for every shape are made. 

The opening passage is typical of the whole work. "Nothing can be 
more consonant to the advice of Horace and Aristotle, than the con- 
duct of our author throughout this poem. . . . The poem opens with 
a most labored and masterly description of a storm. Rollo's state of 
mind in this arduous situation is finely painted: 

Now Rollo storms more loudly than the wind, 
Now doubts and black despair perplex his mind ; 
Hopeless to see his vessel safely harbored, 
He hardly knows his starboard from his larboard. 

That a hero in distress should not know his right hand from his left, 
is most natural and affecting." 

Between 1794 and 1797 there was published in installments an 
anonymous poem called "The Pursuits of Literature." It was the 
work of a T. J. Mathias, and may, says Professor Courthope, "be 
taken as a faithful mirror of the dominant literary taste of English 
Society during the war with revolutionary France." That the mantle 
of Pope had fallen upon its author — and proved something of a mis- 
fit — is proved by such lines as the following: 

Still be your knowledge temperate and discreet. 
Though not as Jones sublime, as Bryant great. 
Prepared to prove, in Senate or the Hall, 
That States by learning rise, by learning fall. 

Thirteen editions of this poem were devoured by the public in eleven 
years; and De Quincey long afterward spoke of it as "a celebrated 
satire, much read in my youth." A few months after the publication 
of "Lyrical Ballads" appeared "The Shade of Alexander Pope on 

[ 25 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the Banks of the Thames," "by the author of 'The Pursuits of Lit- 
erature,' " which attained the honor of a third edition in one year, 
while "Tintern Abbey" and "The Ancient Mariner" would not sell 
to the amount of five hundred copies. Pope's amiable ghost is repre- 
sented as lamenting the good old days of Queen Anne: 

Then oft with Ministers would Genius walk: 
Oxford and St. John loved with Swift to talk. . . . 
But in these dark, forlorn, distracted days 
[which were producing "Christabel" and the "Lucy" poems] . . . 
Few friends are found for poetry and wit. 

Aided by the same popular wave, Gifford's "Baeviad" and "Mae- 
viad" (1794 and 1795), bitter satires against the Delia Cruscan 
poets in the manner of "The Dunciad," required an eighth edition 
by 1811. 

The demand for Hayley and Miss Seward was, no doubt, due in 
large part to their cheap sentimentality, that ever salable quality in 
the literary market; the great vogue of "The Pursuits of Literature" 
was unquestionably assisted by its personal allusions; but none the 
less the popular success of these poems demonstrates how much 
the general reader around 1800 relished what he believed to be the 
couplet and diction of Pope. 

Another excellent barometer as to the public taste is found in 
Robert Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy," which sold nearly thirty thou- 
sand copies between 1800 and 1803. A plowman by early environ- 
ment and half-starved tailor by trade, Bloomfield was in no position 
to analyze the poetic demands of his day. For once he stumbled 
blindly on success, and could never repeat his triumph. In his 
formerly well-known and now forgotten poem the four seasons 
wheel round, as with Thomson; and, as with Thomson, there is much 
first-hand observation of pastoral life, too often devitalized by pon- 
derous diction. As he drew on Thomson for subject-matter, so he 
drew on the Pope imitators for verse and vocabulary; and, though 
at times, in a rather wooden way, he came close to the heart of 
nature, his vogue was the vogue of eighteenth-century materials 
revamped. 

[ 26 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

Yet Plenty reigns, and from her boundless hoard, 
Though not one jelly trembles on the board. 
Supplies the feast with all that sense can crave; 
With all that made our great forefathers brave, 
Ere the cloy'd palate countless flavours try'd, 
And cooks had Nature's judgment set aside. 
With thanks to Heaven, and tales of rustic lore, 
The mansion echoes when the banquet's o'er; 
A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound. 
As quick the frothing horn performs its round; 
Care's mortal foe; that sprightly joy imparts 
To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts. 

All works mentioned hitherto are now practically forgotten, and 
deservedly so. It remains to consider three men of more enduring 
reputation who first won the public ear by playing in the approved 
manner, though with some new notes, on the Twick'nam instrument. 
These men were Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell. Crabbe published 
nothing between 1785 and 1807, the period now under discussion, 
but he was a prominent writer both before and after his long silence; 
and his "Village" was deservedly popular as a new literary star 
when Wordsworth began writing. Crabbe's work during the eight- 
eenth century consisted of three poems, "The Library" (1781), 
"The Village" (1783), and "The Newspaper" (1785). The first 
and last of these were dried-up Pope imitations, didactic or satirical, 
which deservedly won little applause for their mummified charms. 
"The Village" is a masterpiece in its own harsh type, and, being 
popular from the first, became an index of the public temper. Certain 
critics have attempted to class Crabbe among the forerunners of the 
romantic "Return to Nature," as a man who, unlike the Augustan 
pastoral poets, wrote with his eye on the object. Whatever may be 
the case with his work after 1807, such a classification of his earlier 
verse is highly misleading. "The Library" and "The Newspaper" 
contain not a single allusion to external nature, nor is there anything 
about it in "The Village" after the first hundred lines. Readers have 
often drawn a wrong impression from the grim accuracy of that 
opening passage, which was written with purely satirical aims, to 

[ 27 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

show the falseness of earlier pastorals, and not drawn from any- 
spontaneous delight in either the beauty or the harshness of Nature 
per se. The rest of the poem is written in the belief that 

The proper study of mankind is man, 

and examines him with the withering disillusionment of Swift. 

Here, wand'ring long, amid these frowning fields, 
I sought the simple life that Nature yields; 
Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurp'd her place, 
And a bold, artful, surly, savage race, 

he tells us; and he found these objects of Rousseau's enthusiasm, 

only skill 'd to take the finny tribe. 
The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe. 



The doctor 



bids the gazing throng around him fly, 
And carries fate and physic in his eye: 
A potent quack, long versed in human ills. 
Who first insults the victim whom he kills. 

The rural pastor proves 

A sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day. 
And, skill'd at whist, devotes the night to play. 

Irregular country amours have for Crabbe none of the glamour 
which Burns threw around them. 

Near her the swain, about to bear for life 
One certain evil, doubts 'twixt war and wife; 
But, while the falt'ring damsel takes her oath. 
Consents to wed, and so secures them both. 

The popular success of "The Village" proved the still unshaken 
supremacy of the pure Pope tradition. The triumphs of Rogers and 
Campbell soon after showed the popularity of the modified Pope 
current, where metre and other obvious details belonged to "the 
good old" convention, and the subject-matter mixed Augustan 
moralizing with late eighteenth-century sentimentalism or touches 

[ 28 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

of romantic interest in far countries and revolutionary efforts for 
liberty. These poems, like Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy," satisfied 
at once the audience's conventional respect for the old and its 
craving for the new. Rogers's "Pleasures of Memory" appeared in 
1792, and eleven editions, the last six of one thousand copies each, 
were struck off before 1800. The Edinburgh Review said of it in 
1813: "It acquired a popularity, originally very great, and which has 
not only continued amid extraordinary fluctuations of general taste, 
but increased amidst a succession of formidable competitors." Over 
22,000 copies of it had been put on the market by 181 6, and it con- 
tinued a general favorite until after Byron's death. It is easy to 
understand how this should be. "The Pleasures of Memory" is a 
piece of charming mediocrity. Its virtues are those of Esperanto or 
any other universal language; it expresses no deep message to any 
one but has some meaning for everybody. One could hardly imagine 
a poem, launched in the midst of contending schools and tastes, more 
calculated to please both God and Mammon. To the lovers of 
romantic medievalism, the followers of Warton, Beattie, and Hurd, 
the author tells how 

the stem grandeur of a Gothic tower 
Awes us less deeply in its morning hour. 
Than when the shades of Time serenely fall 
On every broken arch and ivied wall. 

For the sentimentalist, fresh from tear-stained novel or comedy, he 
has lines like the following: 

All, all escaped — ^but ere the lover bore 
His faint and faded Julia to the shore. 
Her sense had fled ! Exhausted by the storm, 
A fatal trance hung o'er her pallid form. 

It was not for nothing that Madame D'Arblay described "The 
Pleasures of Memory" as "that most sweet poem." The poet leads 
the lovers of natural scenery to the Lake region of Wordsworth, 

Ere the rapt youth, recoiling from the roar. 
Gazed on the tumbling tide of dread Lodore. 

[ 29 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 
The theme of his poem, un-Wordsworthian as it is in most respects, 
is the praise of emotion ''recollected in tranquility." Its chief appeal, 
however, was to the still numerous admirers of neo-classicism, to 
men like Adam Smith, who two years before its publication had 
cried out to the author, "Sir, there has been but one Voltaire." The 
metre is more sweet than Pope's and with less twanging power, but 
obviously modeled on "The Essay on Man." Eighteenth-century 
"poetic diction" is everywhere present. The closing lines sum up the 
author's attitude as that of the "Age of Reason." 

Lighter than air, Hope's summer visions die, 
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky; 
If but a beam of sober Reason play, 
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away! 
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power 
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour? 
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight, 
Pour round her path a stream of living light ; 
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, 
Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest! 

In Scotland, though many critics had maintained Pope's theories 
with true Lowland dogmatism and microscopic versifiers had written 
in his couplet, he had made few disciples among the genuine sons of 
Apollo. Consequently there is a touch of dramatic irony in the fact 
that the best poem in his vein written by a Scotchman appeared in 
the last year of the eighteenth century. This was "The Pleasures of 
Hope" by Thomas Campbell, printed when he was only twenty-one, 
and the greatest popular success that he ever achieved. Several large 
editions of it were sold before the summer of 1800. "No poem had 
ever met with a more flattering reception," says the poet's biogra- 
pher. "The author received the united congratulations of eminent 
theologians, lawyers, and historians. ... It was said that the lover 
presented it to his mistress, the husband to his wife, the mother to 
her daughter, the brother to his sister; and that it was recited in 
public lectures, and given as a prize-volume in schools." As a boy 
Campbell had come under various romantic influences, including 
"Ossian"; but for some years before writing "The Pleasures of 

[ 30 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

Hope" had reverted to neo-classic models. Gray, Goldsmith, and 
Pope were his favorite authors; and he followed the latter so slav- 
ishly in his undergraduate poem at Glasgow University, "An Essay 
on the Origin of Evil," that his fellows for some time called him 
"the Pope of Glasgow." In 1797, shortly after coming to Edinburgh, 
he wrote: "Horace is my favorite lyrist, ancient or modern." After 
the great success of his poem, he was dubbed there, "the Erasmus 
Darwin of Edinburgh." 

"The Pleasures of Hope" is not exactly like what Pope did write, 
but is very much like what we might have expected from him had 
he lived in 1799. The metrical effect resembles closely that of 
"Eloisa to Abelard," which — as we are too apt to forget — is as truly 
Pope as "The Dunciad." The chief difference in subject-matter is 
Campbell's wealth of allusion to past events and distant regions, 
which is so great that an annotated edition of his poem would make 
an excellent primer in history and geography. This, however, repre- 
sents a change in mental resources rather than in mental attitude. 
In Queen Anne's reign Clive's victory at Plassey and Washington's 
at Yorktown had not filled English minds with pictures of Hindu 
luxury and forest ambush; nor had historic and philological research 
unrolled before them, as in Campbell's day 

her ample page 
Rich with the spoils of time. 

Campbell's contemporaries believed his "Pleasures of Hope" clearly 
in the Pope tradition; it was in the strength of that faith that they 
gave it welcome; and we see no reason for quarreling with their 
verdict. Pope's 

Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind 

is not very different from Campbell's lines: 

Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time, 
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime; 
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore, 
Trace every wave, and culture every shore. 

[ 31 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along, 
And the dread Indian chants a dismal song, 
Where human fiends on midnight errands walk, 
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk- 
There shall the flocks on thymy pasture stray, 
And Shepherds dance at Summer's opening day. 

Considering that Campbell wrote after the French Revolution, his 
sympathy with liberty and Poland is not so much more striking than 
Pope's lines in "The Essay on Man": 

Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone. 
The enormous faith of many made for one? 

The great vogue of modified Pope imitations at the end of the 
eighteenth century represented the force of a long tradition, not an 
organized movement, or even an instinctive sympathy, among the 
poets concerned. Rogers liked some of Campbell's poems but was 
no great admirer of "The Pleasures of Hope." Apparently also he 
disapproved of Crabbe. The beginning of "The Pleasures of Hope" 
condemns as unsatisfactory "Nature pictured too severely true," 
which would hardly argue enthusiasm for "The Village." It is a 
question whether the avidity of the public was quite as great as the 
sales would indicate, for when a book is fashionable the number of 
purchasers may exceed the number of readers. Neither were the 
authors involved necessarily anti-romantic. The journals of Rogers 
during the period show a mild love of Gothic architecture; he ad- 
mired Beattie's "Minstrel"; and Anna Seward was a most enthu- 
siastic devotee of "Ossian." But certainly literary England at the 
turn of the century was in no mood to welcome poetry which out- 
spokenly decried Pope and which was aggressively unlike him in 
thought and style. 

Ill 

In the field of creative poetry innovation had to encounter a 
hidebound traditional prejudice. In the field of prose this was not so. 
Prose was in the late eighteenth century a newcomer in the field of 
literature, a vulgar upstart with no great traditions to maintain. If 

[ 32 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

its works fell into types and schools, their differences were only 
vaguely recognized; and any one felt free to read a prose work that 
appealed to him without incurring the charge of literary heresy. It 
is a question if the popularity of Macpherson's ^'Ossian" was not 
aided by the fact that, being in rhythmic prose, it shocked no metri- 
cal convention. In France the distinction was so keenly felt that 
romantic prose by Rousseau, St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand was 
widely read for nearly a lifetime before markedly romantic poetry 
ventured to appear at all. It was probably in part due to this preju- 
dice that during the last decade of the eighteenth century the Gothic 
and medieval romance attained an astounding popularity, while the 
medieval poems of Tom Warton and Chatterton and the old Norse 
or Welsh translations of Gray were but little read. 

Another and stronger reason for the vogue of the Gothic novel 
was the general melodramatic taste of the generation. This called 
into existence shortly before the turn of the century a flood of cheap 
melodramatic translations and adaptations from the German, which 
had little enough of enduring value, but which served as a gauge of 
the public's attitude and in various ways influenced later literature. 
The German melodrama and Gothic romance were closely related. 
Mrs. Radcliffe and M. G. Lewis, the tv/o chief exponents of the latter 
type, travelled in Germany before producing some of their best- 
known work, and appealed to the same love of sentiment, excite- 
ment, and sham medievalism as their Teutonic contemporaries. The 
vogue of the two literary types was exactly synchronous, save for 
the fact that the demand for Mrs. Radcliffe's novels did not die out 
so abruptly. 

From 1762 to 1790 there was a thin but unbroken line of succes- 
sion in novels medieval in date and more or less unearthly in atmos- 
phere. They dealt with underground passages, haunted chambers, 
lost heirs, knights who acted, not as history indicates, but as young 
ladies believed that they should; and all the other appurtenances of 

The life that never was on sea or land. 

Some of these had been popular, others not. Between 1789 and 1797, 
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe published a series of romances which had a 

[ 33 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

transitory but brilliant popular success, a sale so good that she re- 
ceived £800 for the last one, an exceedingly high price in that day. 
Her ''Mysteries of Udolpho," as an old lady told Thackeray, was 
"one of the most famous romances that ever was published in this 
country." To say nothing of her gushing female admirers, she was 
probably read by every one of the future great writers of the roman- 
tic generation. Tom Moore had perused her as early as 1796. Her 
influence appears repeatedly in Scott's writings, and in Byron's 
"Manfred" and "Lara." Shelley as a boy devoured her pages. 
Keats alludes to her, though without enthusiasm. When her 
"Udolpho" appeared, the aged and scholarly Joseph Warton sat up 
most of the night to finish it. Byron bracketed her with Otway, 
Schiller, and Shakespeare among those who had hallowed Venice 
for readers; and "Barry Cornwall" with Le Sage, Fielding, Rich- 
ardson, and Sterne among those who "forced me to travel onwards to 
the Intellectual Mountains." "The mighty magician" of "Udolpho," 
Mathias called her; and Leigh Hunt as a child ate his cake "wiping 
away the crumbs as they fell upon our 'Mysteries of Udolpho.' " 
Now her works are like one of Ossian's ruins, where the wind sighs 
and the thistle grows, but no reader's foot intrudes. 

Elaborate analyses of her various novels can be found elsewhere. 
Coleridge, "on reading a romance in Mrs. Radcliffe's style," amused 
himself "with making out a scheme which was to serve for all 
romances a priori, only varying the proportions. A baron, or bar- 
oness, ignorant of their birth and in some dependent situation; a 
castle, on a rock; a sepulchre, at some distance from the rock; 
deserted rooms; underground passages; pictures; a ghost, so be- 
heved; or a written record, blood in it; a wonderful cut-throat, etc." 
Her general atmosphere has been half humorously summed up by 
Leigh Hunt in two lines: 

Radcliffe, fear-charmed, ever breathlessly creeping 
Through castles and corridors, frightful to sleep in. 

Posterity, indifferent to her ghostly thrills, merely asks what ele- 
ments in her work roused such contemporary enthusiasm. These do 
not include her skillfully conducted plots, which, but for offsetting 

[ 34 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

weaknesses, would give permanent, not temporary, popularity. What 
the late eighteenth century welcomed in her and the mature nine- 
teenth rejected, appear to have been chiefly her subterranean Gothic 
machinery and her half Ossianic, half Richardsonian sentimentality. 
Two passages from "The Italian" will illustrate these traits. The 
iirst describes Ellena Rosalba's attempted escape from the convent 
where she is imprisoned; the second, her preparations for her mar- 
riage, which was broken off a moment later, somewhat like that of 
Jane Eyre. 

"The friar departed, and the nun, still silent, conducted her 
through many solitary passages, where not even a distant foot-fall 
echoed, and whose walls were roughly painted with subjects indica- 
tory of the severe superstitions of the place, tending to inspire 
melancholy awe. Ellena's hope of pity vanished as her eyes glanced 
over these symbols of the disposition of the inhabitants, and on the 
countenance of the nun characterized by a gloomy malignity, which 
seemed ready to inflict upon others some portion of the unhappiness 
she herself suffered. As she glided forward with soundless step, her 
white drapery, floating along these solemn avenues, and her hollow 
features touched with the mingled light and shadow which the partial 
rays of a taper she held occasioned, she seemed like a spectre newly 
risen from the grave, rather than a living being." 

"It was a gloomy evening, and the lake, which broke in dark 
waves upon the shore, mingled its hollow sounds with those of the 
wind, that bowed the lofty pines, and swept in gusts among the 
rocks. ... As they approached the chapel, Ellena fixed her eyes 
on the mournful cypresses which waved over it, and sighed. 'Those,' 
she said, 'are funereal mementoes — not such as should grace the 
altar of marriage! Vivaldi, I could be superstitious. — Think you 
not they are portentous of future misfortune ? But forgive me ; my 
spirits are weak.' . . . Thus they entered the chapel. Silence, and 
a kind of gloomy sepulchral light, prevailed within." 

In 1795, between Mrs. Radcliffe's "Udolpho" and her "Italian," 
a new dish was served up for readers in "The Monk" by M. G. 
Lewis, "a little round, fat, oily man of" — twenty, who had that 

[ 35 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 
comfortable joy in a good ghost story which goes with an utter 
absence of the higher imagination. He was induced to finish this 
work, which he had temporarily laid aside, by reading "The Mys- 
teries of Udolpho," he tells us, "which is, in my opinion, one of the 
most interesting books that has ever been published." Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe reciprocated by drawing a large amount of inspiration from 
his "Monk" for "The Italian." In both we have priestly intrigue, 
dark conclaves of the Inquisition, young ladies spirited away to 
gloomy convents and badly treated, people who escape from these 
convents by underground passages past a cell where some former 
monk or nun had died imprisoned, etc. The location of "The Monk" 
is mainly in Spain, but shifts to Germany long enough to introduce 
the ghost of a bleeding nun and the charitable conduct of The 
Wandering Jew. The devil is a leading character, and the only one 
"in at the death" of the unfortunate brother Ambrosio. Of Mrs. 
Radcliffe's sentimental appeal "The Monk" has little but replaces 
this by an equally ever salable ingredient, to wit, immorality. 
Inasmuch, however, as the popularity of the book is long dead and 
the demand for the risque yet lives, it is only fair to believe that 
Lewis's thousands of readers were attracted by his devils, cata- 
combs, and haunted castles as much as by his indecency. 

The works of both these authors, though obviously the progeny 
of Walpole's "Otranto," turn our thoughts to Germany. Lewis had 
been in that country in 1792, and wrote a large part of his novel at 
The Hague. He tells us in his Advertisement that "the bleeding nun 
is a tradition still credited in many parts of Germany; and I have 
been told, that the ruins of the castle of Lauerstein, which she is 
supposed to haunt, may yet be seen upon the borders of Thuringia." 
Mrs. Radcliffe also voyaged on the Rhine the year in which her 
"Mysteries of Udolpho" was published. Here, as her Journal tells us, 
she watched "fortresses or towns, many of them placed in the most 
wild and tremendous situations; their ancient and gloomy structures 
giving ideas of the sullen tyranny of former times," or remembered 
that "there is a story faintly recorded concerning them," one of these 
being "the story, on which the wild and vivid imagination of Ariosto 
is said to have founded his Orlando." Consequently it was not chance 

[ 36 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

but a common impulse which made "The Monk" and "The Italian" 
coincide in date with a flood of German importations. 

Before 1790 English literature had been astonishingly insulated 
from German. One reason for this had been the barrenness of the 
latter for centuries before the death of Pope, its great men being 
either medieval or eighteenth-century with a vast desert between. 
Another reason was the general ignorance, even among scholars, of 
the German language, an amusing proof of which is found in the 
extreme badness of the English translations up to the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. Economic and political conditions also must 
have drawn English interests toward centralized and cosmopolitan 
France rather than toward provincial and disorganized Germany. 
As a result, when England in the last decade before 1800 turned to 
German writers, she imported with more enthusiasm than discern- 
ment; and A. W. Schlegel justly complained that the literature of 
his country was represented west of the North Sea mainly by its 
trash. 

What was lacking in quality, however, was made up in quantity. 
At least eleven tales or novels were rendered from the German 
between 1790 and 1796, several of them medieval or supernatural 
in character. These included "The Sorcerer" and "The Black 
Valley" from Veit Weber's "Sagen der Vorzeit," Schiller's "Ghost- 
seer" and Friederich Kalert's "Geisterbanner" translated as: "The 
Necromancer: or The Tale of the Black Forest." Biirger's unearthly 
ballad of "Lenore" appeared in six translations within a year. Much 
more than this was done in the dramatic field. Goethe's "Stella" 
was Englished in 1798 and his "Goetz von Berlichingen" by Walter 
Scott in 1799. Schiller's "Robbers," a wild, melodramatic play 
glorifying the romantic robber, was translated by Lord Wood- 
houselee in 1795, and had a second edition the same year. Other 
translations of it were made by the Rev. William Render in 1799, 
and by a Mr. Thompson in 1804. Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe" was 
turned into English by a Mr. Peter Colombine in 1795 and by M. G. 
Lewis as "The Minister" in 1797; his "Fiesco," in a good transla- 
tion, came out in 1796. The dominant notes in these plays were 
excess of passion, romantic love of personal liberty, and wild, often 

[ 37 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 
improbable, tragedy. "The Robbers" had already created a furor in 
Germany and now produced one in England. Coleridge wrote to 
Southey in 1794: " 'Tis past one o'clock in the morning. I sat down 
at twelve o'clock to read The Robbers of Schiller. I had read, chill 
and trembling, when I came to the part where the Moor fixes a 
pistol over the robbers who are asleep. I could read no more. My 
God, Southey, who is this Schiller, this convulser of the heart?" 
Two years later Southey in turn wrote to a friend regarding "Kabale 
und Liebe": "Have you read Cabal and Love? In spite of a trans- 
lation for which the translator deserves hanging, the fifth act is 
dreadfully affecting. I want to write my tragedies of the Banditti." 
William Hazlitt, in the prime of his critical powers, could say: 
"Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since I first read the trans- 
lation of The Robbers,' but they have not blotted the impression 
from my mind; it is here still, an old dweller in the chambers of the 
brain. ... I do not like Schiller's later style so well." Goethe's 
"Goetz," which influenced German literature even more than "The 
Robbers," entered the English arena too late; but its German imita- 
tions had been translated before it and had done their work. For 
instance, James Boaden's "Secret Tribunal" was acted at the 
Theater-Royal, Co vent Garden, and printed 1795. The material 
for the play was taken directly from a German novel, "Hermann von 
Unna" (which had already been translated in 1794), but, whatever 
its father, its grandfather was "Goetz." Like Goethe's play it is 
located in late medieval Germany, and draws from "Goetz" the 
scene in Act V before the dread Secret Tribunal (Die Heilige 
Vehme) . 

The German invader triumphed not only on the bookseller's 
counter, but also on the boards of the theater. The chief writer 
introduced here was Kotzebue, a dramatist who, like Scribe and 
Clyde Fitch, seemed bent on proving that theatrical success can be 
independent of Hterary merit. His ephemeral success reached all 
over western Europe, and was by no means peculiar to England; 
but the striking phenomenon there is at once the extent and the 
brevity of his vogue. At least ten of his plays were translated in the 
three years from 1798 to 1800, one in 1801, and no more, that we 

[ 38 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

have discovered, until 1808, after which a few straggUng versions 
appeared. 

The most famous of these dramas was "Menschenhass und Reue," 
freely rendered under the title, "The Stranger," which had presenta- 
tions and editions galore. It is a painfully sentimental play, in which 
an erring wife by long continued repentance wins back her husband 
and cures him of the misanthropy due to her sin. Another, "Adelaide 
of Wulfingen," belongs to the German medieval current deriving 
from "Goetz." Sir Hugo of Wulfingen, absent twenty-three years on 
a crusade in the Holy Land, returns disguised as a pilgrim, and finds 
his son Theobald living happily with a wife named Adelaide. Then 
it is discovered that Adelaide is Hugo's natural daughter, and her 
husband's half-sister. Hugo takes the matter very philosophically, 
and his long arguments excusing incest are apparently approved by 
the author; but Adelaide goes insane with horror and kills both her 
little children. Almost as melodramatic but pleasanter in tone is the 
Peruvian play which Sheridan adapted as "Pizarro." One cannot 
help smiling to see the author of "The Critic" responsible for a book 
that lies open to all his most pointed attacks; but the popular suc- 
cess of the work amply justified his theatrical judgment. Crabb 
Robinson called it "the most excellent play I ever saw for variety 
of attractions"; and Tom Moore wrote to his mother in 1799: "I 
have not yet been to this wonderful 'Pizarro' of Sheridan's, which is 
putting all London into fevers." 

This wave of melodrama was at its height during the years when 
the "Lyrical Ballads" were being written and forced on an indif- 
ferent public. Its abrupt collapse was partly due to its own excesses, 
partly to the combined wit and justice of the satirical attacks made 
on it. Of these there were several, for the literary disease was patent 
to everybody. W. R. Spencer's play "Urania" (1802) is an obvious 
burlesque. Manfred, the hero, who "would give more for an old, 
worm-eaten room full of ghosts, than for a new marble villa full of 
statues," is bent on marrying a spirit, and the Princess of Tarentum 
wins him for a husband by playing the part of one. The Prologue, 
by Lord Townshend, alludes to "fastidious" people who lament that 

[ 39 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Day after day our spectre drama's crammed 
With heavenly spirits or with goblins damned. 

One of the popular Pope imitators in 1798 had made a similar 
attack: 

Mark next, how fable, language, fancy flies 
To Ghosts, and Beards, and Hoppergollop cries: 
Lo, from the abyss, unmeaning spectres drawn, 
The Gothic glass, blue flame, and flick'ring lawn! 
Choked with vile weeds, our once proud Avon strays; 
When Novels die, and rise again in plays: 
No Congress props our Drama's falling state, 
The modern ultimatum is "Translate." 
Thence sprout the morals of the German school. 

In the same year Fawcett, a friend of Wordsworth, wrote in similar 
vein and metre: 

E'en listless fair ones shall from languor wake. 
And o'er the lines with pleasing terror shake, 
If there the lovely tremblers may peruse 
The harsh, coarse horror of a German muse. 
Let hideous Superstition form the base 
On which the wildly dismal tale you raise: 
Let ghastliest forms, pale ghosts, and goblins grim 
Form of your verse the terrible sublime. 

The fiercest and most famous parody, however, was "The 
Rovers," published in The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98). The Dramatis 
Personae include: 

"Prior of the Abbey of Quedlinburgh, very corpulent and cruel 

Rogero, a Prisoner in the Abbey, in love with Matilda Pottin- 
gen. . . . 

Roderic, Count of Saxe Weimar, a bloody tyrant, with red hair 
and an amorous complexion." 

The Prologue tells us: 

Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage; 
And classic buskins soiled a British stage. 
To-night our bard, who scorns pedantic rules, 
[ 40 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND TENDENCIES 

His plot has borrowed from the German schools; 

— The German schools — where no dull maxims bind 

The bold expansion of the electric mind. 

Fixed to no period, circled by no space, 

He leaps the flaming bounds of time and place: 

Round the dark confines of the forest raves, 

With gentle robbers stocks his gloomy caves. 

The first scene is an inn at Weimar. Then — 

Scene changes to a subterranean vault in the abbey of Quedlinburgh ; 
with coffins, 'scutcheons, death's-heads and cross-bones. Toads and other 
loathsome reptiles are seen traversing the obscurer parts of the stage. 
Rogero appears in chains, in a suit of rusty armour, with his beard grown, 
and a cap of grotesque form upon his head. . . . 

Rogero. Eleven years! it is now eleven years since I was first immured 
in this living sepulchre. . . . Yes, here in the depths of an eternal 
Dungeon — in the Nursing Cradle of Hell — the Suburbs of Perdition — in 
a nest of Demons, where Despair, in vain, sits brooding over the putrid 
eggs of Hope; where Agony woos the embrace of Death. 

This is a pointed attack, not only on German adaptations, but also 
on M. G. Lewis's "Castle Spectre," an original play but modeled on 
the foreign type, which represents Earl Reginald as confined in a 
vault under Conway Castle for sixteen years, "emaciated, in coarse 
garments, his hair hanging wildly about his face, and a chain bound 
round his body." The "Castle Spectre," first acted 1797, ran sixty 
nights, continued popular for years, and in print reached an eleventh 
edition in 1803. 

The effect of "The Rovers," according to Walter Scott, was "that 
the German school, with its beauties and its defects, passed com- 
pletely out of fashion." We have already noticed the abrupt cessation 
of Kotzebue's plays after 1800. Scott's version of "Goetz" in 1799 
received only a lukewarm welcome. Coleridge's noble translation of 
Schiller's "Wallenstein" in 1801 fell so flat that Longman was said to 
have lost £250 by it. In the same year "Monk" Lewis's "Tales of 
Wonder," a collection of medieval and supernatural verse narratives 
by himself, Scott, and others, had a very indifferent success. Both 
Germanic influences and melodrama revived to some extent later; 

[ 41 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

but for the time being there was a marked reaction against them; 
and, as Wordsworth and Coleridge gave their audience the impres- 
sion of being "very German," this reaction could hardly have 
lessened their difficulties in winning recognition. 

Whether the sales of existing Gothic romances fell off as fast or 
not, there was a marked chill also in the public attitude toward any 
more of that type. Maturin's "Montorio" in 1804, — a novel of the 
Radcliffe brand and about equal in merit, although, it is true, less 
calculated to win many readers, — met with such indifference that 
the author modified his type of novel. Mrs. Radcliffe in 1802 began 
a sixth romance, "Gaston de Blondeville," but left it in manuscript 
for years. Perhaps she recognized its inferiority, perhaps she 
dropped writing because her financial condition was improved, but 
also the change in public taste had become too obvious. She lived 
until 1823, but published nothing after "The Italian," Meanwhile 
beyond the "fitful fever" of melodrama and the senile decay of neo- 
classicism new and nobler authors began to loom dimly in the 
public eye. 



[ 42 ] 



CHAPTER II 

The Eddy Around Bristol; Rousseau and the French 
Revolution in Poetry, 1794- 1799 

Bristol in 1794, though the second largest city in Great Britain, 
had a woefully small part to show in the history of the nation's 
literature. Yet during the closing years of the eighteenth century it 
became the center of a literary vortex which rejuvenated English 
poetry and made that erstwhile Philistine region the Mecca of many 
a literary pilgrim. "Ten years ago," wrote Southey in 1800, "Bristol 
man was synonymous with Boeotian in Greece, and now we are 
before any of the provincial towns." The poets who made the dis- 
trict famous were for the most part not natives but pilgrims from 
a distance, whom chance and friends had drawn there; yet the 
location was in many ways favorable for the development of a new 
poetic school. The meagerness of local poetic history meant an 
absence of traditional tyranny in literature, and a freer hand for the 
innovator than he would have found in London or even in Edin- 
burgh. Neighboring landscapes, with their beautiful alternation of 
curving bay and suggestively rolling hill, are in marked contrast 
to that harsh and gloomy environment which colored the poetry of 
Crabbe. The district lies on the border-line between Anglo-Saxon 
middle England and the largely Celtic inhabitants of Wales and 
Cornwall. The chief figure in its literature was the boy Chatterton, 
whose corpse had been brought back to its birthplace there a quarter 
of a century before, and the shadow of whose dead hand reaches 
farther than one realizes across the poems of the Bristol Eddy. 

In June, 1794, a Cambridge undergraduate, named Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, visiting Oxford to see an old school-fellow, accidentally 
met there a young Oxonian, Robert Southey, between whom and 

[ 43 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

himself there immediately sprang up a warm friendship. Together 
they formed the romantic scheme known as "Pantisocracy," by 
which the members, having supplied themselves with money, tools, 
wives, and other necessary impedimenta, were to emigrate to 
America, found a colony on the banks of the Susquehanna, own 
property in common, and realize the golden dreams of Rousseau. In 
a few months they had enlisted for this wild scheme several of their 
college friends. The movement was essentially one of romantic 
young poets, for, although only two became ultimately famous, all 
at that time were poets — or thought they were. 

O'er the ocean swell, 
Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottaged dell 
Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray, 

wrote one of them of the American voyage. The enterprise was also 
an outburst of that impractical enthusiasm characteristic of youth 
fresh from college, an enthusiasm generated by four years of a 
university furnishing ideals and four years of a father supplying 
all needed cash. It was above all an offshoot of the teachings of 
Rousseau, with which the heads of its members were seething. 

In August of that year Coleridge came to Bristol, and was intro- 
duced by Southey to Robert Lovell, the son of a wealthy Quaker; 
then, or soon after, all three became acquainted with Joseph Cottle, 
a bookseller and minor poet, who, like Southey, was a Bristol man. 
The scheme of Pantisocracy gradually evaporated, but left behind 
a residuum of closely affiliated young poets, a group whose center 
of gravity, though not their fixed residence, was the great town by 
the Severn. 

Their personal relations, for a time at least, were very close, 
Lovell, Southey, and Coleridge rooming together for some months. 
In 1794 the three men conjointly dashed off their worthless drama, 
"The Fall of Robespierre," the revolutionary effervescence of an 
hour, later revised by Coleridge and published by him at Cambridge. 
In 1795 "Poems by Robert Lovell and Robert Southey, of Balliol 
College, Oxford," were printed at Bath, Coleridge's first book of 
verse following in the succeeding April. Lovell had already married 

[ 44 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

one of the Misses Fricker, of Westbury, a pleasant village two miles 
from Bristol, and Southey was engaged to another. Coleridge now 
made love to a third, and he and Southey were married in Chatter- 
ton's time-hallowed church of St. Mary Redcliffe. While Southey in 
1796 was gone to Spain, his bride boarded with the Cottle 
sisters, two women, wrote the bridegroom, who "make even bigotry 
amiable," 

Lovell died in 1796, but his place was soon more than filled. In 
that same year Coleridge, touring the country for subscribers to 
his new periodical, The Watchman, became acquainted with Charles 
Lloyd at Birmingham, and drew the latter in his wake back to the 
Bristol region. Lloyd was an ill-balanced man of twenty-one years 
and considerable ability, whose virtues and literary gifts alike were 
perverted by lifelong melancholia. He had already written several 
poems, and soon added others, which were published conjointly with 
the work of his new companions. In January, 1797, Lloyd, while 
in London, first met that old school-fellow and friend of Coleridge, 
Charles Lamb, who about this time became one of their new band 
of apostles. Lamb's relations were chiefly by letter, for poverty, desk 
work, and family troubles held him in London; but he was a very 
genuine part of the circle, corresponding with its various members, 
writing poetry with them, and helping to mold opinion. That summer 
he spent an epoch-making week in the green seclusion of Nether 
Stowey with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and two months later, 
with Lloyd, visited Southey at Burton. Afterwards in London he 
had many a pleasant hour with Southey while the latter was study- 
ing law and writing "Madoc." Poems by Lamb and Lloyd found a 
hospitable nook in the second edition of Coleridge's volume in 1797; 
and "Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb" appeared 
the next year. Lloyd dedicated the last-named poems to Robert 
Southey, whom he tells that "the greater part of them were written 
beneath your roof, and owe their existence to its quiet comforts." 
Through Joseph Cottle, also, the group became acquainted with his 
elder brother Amos, who, like himself, wrote poetry not wisely but 
too fluently. Then there was Thomas Poole, the learned and high- 
minded tanner of Nether Stowey, whose good sense kept him from 

[ 45 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

attempting poetry but made him an excellent inspiration to poets. 
John Thelwall, also, a revolutionary firebrand, fleeing from govern- 
mental persecution, had settled near by in Wales, and both by letters 
and visits became temporarily a part of the group. 

The chief acquisition, however, was Wordsworth. Since 1795 he 
had been living at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, about fifty miles from 
Bristol and thirty or forty from Nether Stowey, his house there, 
incidentally, belonging to a Bristol merchant, whose son had leased 
it to him. Wordsworth mentioned Southey early in 1796, and appar- 
ently knew of Cottle and Coleridge about the same time. In 1797 
he came to live near Coleridge, who was the cohesive magnet that 
drew all these wandering particles together. Passing mention may 
also be made of William Hazlitt, later one of the greatest prose 
writers of his age, but at this time merely a callow and meditative 
youth. Drawn by his enthusiasm for Coleridge, he passed three 
weeks in the neighborhood of Nether Stowey, and previously had 
gone to the beautiful vale of Llangollen "by way of initiating myself 
in the mysteries of natural scenery." 

Though gravitating around a great commercial city, this move- 
ment was essentially a rural one. A considerable amount of Southey's 
verse was written in the suburb of Westbury, some of Coleridge's 
in rustic retirement at Clevedon, ten miles away, where he rented 
a cottage for a short time with his bride; and the best poetry of all 
was produced around the little village of Nether Stowey, over thirty 
miles to the southwest of Bristol, where the Quantock hills look out 
on the sea. There was a continual coming and going and changing 
of residence among the writers concerned, which made Bristol the 
center of the intellectual eddy but by no means the dominant element 
in the atmosphere. 

Socially Wordsworth became affiliated with Coleridge alone 
rather than with the whole group. His letters to the Cottle brothers, 
though exceedingly cordial, are few and short. He saw little of 
Lamb, who most of the time was absent in London, or of Southey 
and Lloyd, from both of whom Coleridge was drifting away. Words- 
worth's brother Christopher by September, 1800, was engaged to 
Lloyd's sister; and Joseph Cottle tells us of spending a very pleasant 

[ 46 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

week at Alfoxden with Coleridge and Wordsworth, in return for 
which Wordsworth and Dorothy stayed a week with him after 
quitting Alfoxden; but it is probable that Wordsworth summed up 
his social relations to the Bristol Parnassus when he wrote in March, 
1798: "We have no particular reason to be attached to the neighbor- 
hood of Stowey, but the society of Coleridge, and the friendship 
of Poole." 

Shortly after 1798 the group disintegrated. Southey went to Spain, 
Coleridge and Wordsworth to Germany; and afterwards all three, 
as well as Lloyd, settled in the Lake region, over two hundred miles 
from the scene of their early enthusiasms. Lovell was dead; Poole 
remained at Stowey and the Cottle brothers at Bristol. Thelwall 
drifted elsewhere. Lamb corresponded with his friends as cordially 
as ever, but no longer wrote poetry with them. He may be said to 
have ended his career as a minor poet with the publication and 
failure of "John Woodvil" in 1802 ; after that he turned from poetry 
to scholarship, and eventually from scholarship to the field of his 
final triumph, the prose essay. 

What did this movement represent? Was there any new and 
dominant note in teaching or literary type common to all its mem- 
bers? Did such almost painfully minor figures as Cottle and Lovell 
really influence the great minds of Coleridge and Wordsworth or 
the slightly inferior but none the less commanding intellects of 
Southey and Lamb? We cannot hope to give a final answer to these 
questions ; nor, could Coleridge or Southey be called from the grave, 
would they probably be able to give it, so subtle are the influences 
of environment, so much can a great intellect winnow unconsciously 
from the inferior minds around it. We do know, however, that 
Southey in 1806 mentioned "three men now all in their graves, [all 
Pantisocrats] each of whom produced no little effect upon my char- 
acter and after life, — Allen, Lovell, and poor Edmund Seward, — 
whom I never remember without the deepest love and veneration." 
In August, 1797, Lamb wrote: 

I thought on Lloyd; 
All he had been to me. 

[ 47 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Criticism, imaginative suggestion, and the formation of esthetic 
theory are not by any means the only aids which a galaxy of minor 
writers offer to their more gifted comrades. For men who are 
young sympathy and enthusiasm — even if only temporary and 
marred by personal quarrels— counts much; for men who are poor 
financial aid is not to be ignored; and there is a confidence begotten 
from the consciousness of numbers that must have meant a great 
deal to the gregarious and vacillating mind of Coleridge. All his best 
writing was kindled in his mind by inspiring companionship; the 
moment that he felt himself alone in the world he became dumb. 

Certain facts may be accepted without demur. This was the chief 
semi-organized movement in poetry of the new generation. Every 
one of the genuine poets in it was under twenty-eight. Here was no 
"tribe of Ben," no "Dr. Johnson and his circle," no ardent young 
Paul at the feet of a hoary Gamaliel; in every matter, literary, social, 
or political, there was a general feeling: "Behold, I make all things 
new." Young Campbell at this very time was the protigS in Edin- 
burgh of the elderly Dr. Anderson; Scott was a legal officer and 
upholder of the good old order; the Bristol group had broken with 
the past. 

Furthermore, Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, as well as 
Amos Cottle, were all Oxford or Cambridge men. In this they 
differed from Burns, Crabbe, and Rogers, who had no university 
career; from Cowper, who began poetry late in life when college 
influences were dead; from Scott and Campbell, who were educated 
in the north; and from INIoore, who studied in Dublin. They were 
the only spokesmen in poetry for the two great English universities 
from 1790 to 1807. Neither they nor their almoB matres, apparently, 
looked upon each other with great enthusiasm; but they had as 
college men a certain common body of thought and feeling. This 
may partly account for the fact that much of their earlier and poorer 
work imitates Gray, the scholar poet of Cambridge, Tom Warton, 
the scholar poet of Oxford, or that plaintive disciple of the Wartons, 
William Bowles. Amos Cottle's only title to consideration is a very 
mediocre translation of Saemund's "Edda," continuing the tradition 
of Gray's Norse translations. The little body of immature verse 

[ 48 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

bequeathed us by Lovell is in almost slavish imitation of Gray, his 
"Decayed Farmhouse" ending with an epitaph like that of the 
"Elegy." His sonnets are equally derivative from Bowles, a quota- 
tion from whom heads the book, Bowles had almost no social inter- 
course with the group; but his little volume of melodious and gently 
melancholy sonnets was the idol to which all did homage. "As much 
bad criticism as you please," cried Coleridge to Holcroft in 1794, 
"but no blasphemy against the divinity of a Bowles!" Lloyd has two 
quotations from Bowles in the Advertisement to the poems of 1795, 
and a third prefixed to those of 1797. Wordsworth in 1793 had read 
his sonnets on Westminster bridge, without stirring until the book 
was finished. Southey in 1832 spoke of Bowles's "sweet and un- 
sophisticated style; upon which I endeavored, now almost forty 
years ago, to form my own." As late as 181 5 Coleridge could say, 
"The being so near him has been a source of constant gratification 
to me." Lamb in 1796 bracketed Burns, Bowles, and Cowper as 
among those who redeemed poetry from the charge of degeneracy; 
and his eight sonnets published in 1797 have several reminiscences 
of the popular sonneteer. Warton's distinctively medieval touch 
appears more rarely, as in Southey's sonnet 

Thou ruined relique of the ancient pile; 
in Lovell 's on Stonehenge: 

Was it a spirit on yon shapeless pile? 

It wore methought an hoary Druid's form, 

Musing on ancient daysl 

or in that of Lloyd on Craig-Millar Castle : 

This hoary labyrinth, the wreck of Time, 
Solicitous with timid step I tread. 
Scale the stem battlement, or vent'rous climb 
Where the rent watch-tower bows its grassy head. 

Another bond that united the group was their sympathy with the 
French Revolution. All over England and Scotland, in Edinburgh 
and especially in London, there were revolutionary enthusiasts, 
organizations, and various types of more or less valuable prose 

[ 49 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

literature; but nowhere else could the French "citizen" find such 
a nest of sympathizing young poets as around Bristol. Poole had 
faced social ostracism and Thelwall governmental prosecution for 
their outspoken opinions on this head. The hero of Lloyd's immature 
"Oswald" 

Would oft with shuddering indignation scan 
The dark abuses of the social plan; 

and the more mature Lloyd, the associate of Lamb and Southey, 
looked forward to the time 

when equal man 
Shall deem the world Ms temple. 

Coleridge in 1795 lectured at Bristol on the French Revolution. 
The joint play on that subject by himself, Southey, and Lovell, 
bears out the statement of Cottle that "all three of my young friends, 
in that day of excitement, felt ... a hearty sympathy with the 
efforts made in France to obtain political ameliorations." Southey's 
worthless drama of "Wat Tyler," written in 1794, though not pub- 
lished for many years, is full of revolutionary doctrine. 

What matters me who wears the crown of France? — 

Whether a Richard or a Charles possess it? 

They reap the glory, they enjoy the spoil: 

We pay, we bleed. The sun would shine as cheerly, 

The rains of heaven as seasonably fall, 

Though neither of these royal pests existed; 

or again: 

Why are not all these empty ranks abolished ; 
King, slave, and lord, ennobled into man? 
Are we not equal all? 

Wordsworth, probably in the same year, fresh from those expe- 
riences on the continent which are narrated in "The Prelude," 
wrote: "Hereditary distinctions, and privileged orders of every 
species, I think must necessarily counteract the progress of human 
improvement; hence it follows that I am not amongst the admirers 

• [ 50 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

of the British Constitution." Is it any wonder that the good people 
of Nether Stowey looked askance on the whole set; that Words- 
worth was practically ordered out of his comfortable quarters at 
Alfoxden by the scandalized owner; and that the government 
hurried down a spy to keep watch on him and Coleridge as they 
lounged among the sand-dunes, composing the "Lyrical Ballads"? 
Hand in hand with the feeling of these authors for the French 
Revolution went their enthusiasm for the "return to nature" taught 
by Rousseau. Other poets, like Burns and Cowper, had written about 
nature when circumstances had brought them in touch with it; but 
nowhere else in English poetry had there been such an organized 
expedition to find it. "Had I, my dear Collins, the pen of Rousseau," 
wrote Southey in 1793, "I would attempt to describe the various 
scenes which have presented themselves to me, and the various 
emotions occasioned by them . . . What scene can be more calcu- 
lated to expand the soul than the sight of nature, in all her loveliest 
works ?" More simple but more sincere were his words in the summer 
of 1797: "You know not how infinitely my happiness is increased 
by residing in the country." Coleridge in "Frost at Midnight" re- 
joices that his babe shall not grow up like himself in a town, but shall 

wander like a breeze 
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds 
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
And mountain crags; so shalt thou see and hear 
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
Of that eternal language, which thy God 
Utters. 

The unearthly splendors of "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mari- 
ner" have blinded many to the large amount of nature poetry written 
by Coleridge in this period, especially his blank verse. It is more 
negative in its magic than the wild rhyming masterpieces, but has 
all the charm of a restful landscape. Still more has the nature 
element been overlooked in Southey's "English Eclogues," written 
in 1798 and 1799 chiefly at Westbury. In spite of their limp blank 
verse, they have a pleasant aroma of humble life, and 

[ 51 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

sweet brier, scenting sweet 
The morning air; rosemary and marjoram, 
All wholesome herbs; and then, that woodbine wreathed 
So lavishly around the pillared porch. 

These lines are from "The Ruined Cottage," identical in title with 
an earlier poem by Wordsworth, afterwards incorporated in "The 
Excursion." Southey's "Inscriptions" of this period, without being 
great, often have pleasing rural touches; and the one "For the 
Cenotaph at Ermenonville" reminds us that 

Rousseau 
Loved these calm haunts of Solitude and Peace; 
Here he has heard the murmurs of the lake. 
And the soft rustling of the poplar grove, 
When o'er its bending boughs the passing wind 
Swept a gray shade. Here, if thy breast be full, 
If in thine eye the tear devout should gush. 
His spirit shall behold thee, to thine home 
From hence returning, purified of heart. 

Joseph Cottle's "Malvern Hills" (1798), the nearest thing to 
respectable poetry that he ever did, is mainly a description of land- 
scape beauties in the historic region of "Piers Plowman's Vision." 
The blank verse is woefully fiat, but some of the word pictures are 
pleasing. It was only after 1800 that Cottle turned to impossible 
epics, which seem a reductio ad absurdum of the work of his fellow 
Bristowan Southey, and made his long-suffering critic Lamb cry 
out, "My God!" During his earlier period, his companions accepted 
him as a genuine poet and felt at times that his 

modest verse to musing Quiet dear 
Is rich with tints heaven-borrowed. 

Lloyd was also a preacher of the return to nature, but of a differ- 
ent and less pleasing return. In him it is the neurotic's desire to flee 
from the conflicts of life, seeking in nature, not its beauty, but its 
restfulness, not a Parnassus but a sanatorium. For this reason, 
though he writes much about landscapes he is both vague and 

[ 52 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

unsatisfactory; and his best work, which is only mediocre, deals 
with his own griefs in a mood more sincere than wholesome. His 
blank verse is often stilted; but at times like Cowper or Words- 
worth, as in the following lines about his former home and dead 
mother (written December, 1796): 

No taper twinkled cheerily to tell 
That she had heap'd the hospitable fire, 
Spread the trim board, and with an anxious heart 
Expected me, her "dearest boy," to spend 
With her the evening hour! Oh, no! 'twas gone. 
The friendly taper, and the warm fire's glow. 

A little later he utters a passage decidedly Wordsworthian: 

Methinks he acts the purposes of life. 
And fills the measure of his destiny 
With best approved wisdom, who retires 
To some majestic solitude; his mind 
Rais'd by those visions of eternal love. 
The rock, the vale, the forest, and the lake. 
The sky, the sea, and everlasting hills. 

For Wordsworth a few years earlier there had been a time when 
nature 

To me was all in all — I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion; 

and Dorothy could write of her brother: "He is never so happy as 
when in a beautiful country." By 1794 even amid the landscape 
splendor of Keswick, he could "begin to wish much to be in Town. 
Cataracts and mountains are good occasional society, but they will 
not do for constant companions"; and by the time "Tintern Abbey" 
was composed he had 

learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity. 

[ 53 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Yet that experience only drew him more firmly to the poetry of rural 
life. He had, as he believed, sifted truth from error in Rousseau, and 
found the truth a valuable mental leaven. 

Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
And mountains; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth. 

Though both rural and provincial, the Bristol Eddy introduced 
more foreign influences than any other poetical movement during 
the career of Napoleon. We have already seen how much of it was 
French, A marked element in it also was German. Part of this was 
caught from the popular German current, which nobody in those 
years escaped. 

Schiller, that hour I would have wished to die, 

cried Coleridge on reading "The Robbers." Wordsworth's "Border- 
ers," written just before he joined Coleridge, and begun in the year 
in which Woodhouselee's translation of "The Robbers" appeared, 
shows many traces of kinship both with that drama and with the 
French Revolution, though, like all the author's borrowings, very 
much Words worthized. As in Schiller's play the hero is a romantic 
young idealist at the head of a wild band of freebooters; in both 
we have a plotting subordinate, a wronged and dying old man, a 
tragic love affair for the young chief, and a moderate amount of 
Gothic ruin. Coleridge's "Osorio," which he read to Wordsworth 
soon after their first meeting, with its overdone passion and touches 
of subterranean horror, was probably leavened with German yeast. 
The trip which the two men made late in 1798 to the country of 
Herder and Klopstock was the result of past enthusiasms fully as 
much as a generator of new ones. Even in the case of "The Ancient 
Mariner" Southey, reviewing it, called it "a Dutch attempt at Ger- 
man sublimity." To a reader of the current version this dictum may 
seem ridiculous; but if he turns to the 1798 edition he will find the 
criticism, though untrue, by no means unnatural. There was a minor 
element of the Germano- Gothic in the original wording of "The 

[ 54 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

Ancient Mariner," which was sloughed off in later revision. Lines 
such as 

His bones were black with many a crack, 
All black and bare, I ween; 
Jet-black and bare, save where with rust 
Of mouldy damps and chamel crust 
They're patched with purple and green; 

or 

A gust of wind sterte up behind 

And whistled through his bones; 

Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth, 

Half whistles and half groans, 

make one think of the spectral bridegroom in Biirger's "Lenore." 
Coleridge in 1796 had planned writing a life of Jacob Boehme, the 
Bohemian mystic who so influenced Blake; and it may be that that 
mysticism of which his contemporaries complained so bitterly was 
already beginning to flow in from a foreign channel. 

A separate German influence was at work on Southey. Probably 
the foremost leader in scholarly, as opposed to melodramatic, impor- 
tation of Teutonic literature was William Taylor of Norwich, who, 
according to Professor Beers, "did more than any man of his gene- 
ration, by his translations and critical papers in The Monthly 
Magazine and Monthly Review, to spread a knowledge of the new 
German literature in England." Southey had read his translation 
of "Lenore" and "the other ballad of Biirger, in Monthly Maga- 
zine," which "is most excellent," by July, 1796. In 1798 the two 
men were introduced, and began a correspondence, chiefly on 
literary subjects. Even before their meeting Southey was already 
acquainted with Taylor's writings, so that the influence on him must 
have been almost continuous during the last four years of the cen- 
tury. "You have made me hunger and thirst after German poetry," 
wrote Southey to his new friend in 1799. The prefatory note to the 
"English Eclogues" tells us that the poet was inspired to compose 
them "by what was told me of the German Idyls by my friend Mr. 
William Taylor of Norwich." He adds (in 1799) that they "bear 

[ 55 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

no resemblance to any poems in our language," which in a sense is 
true; and yet they constantly remind one of Wordsworth. A very 
different atmosphere, that of the Germano-Gothic, mixed with the 
influence of Percy's ''Reliques," is felt in Southey's Ballads and 
Metrical Tales, most of which were written between 1796 and 1798. 
M. G. Lewis included his "Old Woman of Berkeley" and "St. 
Patrick's Purgatory," without his consent, in the "Tales of Won- 
der"; and "the metre is Mr. Lewis's invention" in "Mary, the Maid 
of the Inn." 

Behind a wide column, half breathless with fear, 

She crept to conceal herself there: 
That instant the moon o'er a dark cloud shone clear, 
And she saw in the moonlight two ruffians appear, 

And between them a corpse did they bear. 

The author is usually serious, at times humorous, but at his best in 
a mood between the two, like that of Burns's "Tam O'Shanter," as 
in his thoroughly enjoyable "Old Woman of Berkeley": 

And in He came with eyes of flame. 

The Devil, to fetch the dead ; 
And all the church with his presence glowed 

Like a fiery furnace red. 

In Lewis's "Monk" the reader does not know whether to yield him- 
self up to the intended shudder or the instinctive joy of ridicule; 
in Southey he can enjoy both at once, so evenly are humor and 
seriousness blended. There was none too much intercourse after 
1797 between Southey and his brother-in-law Coleridge, whose 
irregular habits he justly condemned, and who had never quite 
forgiven him for abandoning Pantisocracy ; nevertheless part of 
Taylor's influence may have filtered through the author of the 
"English Eclogues" to the authors of the "Lyrical Ballads." Several 
of the Eclogues and of the Metrical Tales also, were sent for criti- 
cism in the autumn of 1798 to Lamb, who was in friendly corre- 
spondence with both Westbury and Nether Stowey. 

Another badge of the Bristol movement, and the one that roused 
most discussion, was the advocacy of simple as opposed to "poetic" 

[ 56 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

diction. Though badly stated and carried to excess, the theories of 
Wordsworth and his friends were that voice of the people which in 
literature is so often the voice of God. To understand them, how- 
ever, one must realize what they attacked. The object of their 
hostility was not mainly Pope but Pope's late eighteenth-century 
imitators, who were carrying to ever more hollow fatuity a literary 
tradition gone to seed. Coleridge was at once contemptuous toward 
"the ignoramuses and Pope-admirers," and willing to include Pope 
himself among the "great single names." Johnson in prose and 
writers like Erasmus Darwin in poetry had "elevated" the 
homely Anglo-Saxon until a reaction was inevitable. "I abso- 
lutely nauseate Darwin's poems," declared Coleridge as early as 
1796. Mackenzie lamented that Johnson's greatest fault was in re- 
jecting every word from the Saxon. Richard Sharp, who in 1787 read 
a paper before the Manchester society on the Nature and Utility of 
Eloquence, was a fervent advocate of the simple style as opposed 
to Johnsonian pedantry. "Johnsonism," he said, "has become almost 
a general disease." Wordsworth considered Chesterfield, the con- 
temporary of Pope, as the last great prose writer in English before 
Johnson "vitiated the language." This was in prose, not poetry; 
but the two types of literature are bound to influence each other. 
The French Revolution by emphasizing popular rights had put a 
premium on the language of the people; and this, combined with the 
decay of neo-classicism, produced a rebound not confined to Eng- 
land. Crabb Robinson in 1803 lent Herder Wordsworth's "Lyrical 
Ballads," and "found that Herder agreed with Wordsworth as to 
poetical language. Indeed Wordsworth's notions on that subject are 
quite German." 

In the case of Coleridge, and to some degree of Wordsworth, 
simple language was a reaction from the turgid or stilted phrase- 
ology of their own earlier poems. They worded the declaration of 
poetic independence; but it is a question if the Bristol group as a 
body had not helped evolve it. Lamb had been preaching a certain 
kind of simplicity at least to the bombastic Coleridge for two years. 
"Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge, or rather, I should say, banish 
elaborateness" (1796). "Write thus . . . and I shall never quarrel 

[ 57 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

with you about simplicity" (1796). "I will enumerate some woeful 
blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which 
was your aim" (1797). Wordsworth declared that he "never cared 
a straw about the 'theory,' and the 'preface' was written at the 
request of Mr. Coleridge, out of sheer good nature." If Words- 
worth's later defence of the Preface was due to North Country 
obstinacy rather than esthetic conviction, the ultimate germ of the 
much discussed "theory" might be traced back to the gentle Elia. 
Lamb's own poetry is usually quite free from the artificial phrase, 
as in the following: 

A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee: 

And yet, in all our little bickerings, 

Domestic jars, there was, I know not what 

Of tender feeling, that were ill exchanged 

For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles 

Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. 

Southey (November, 1797) quotes these lines with approval, and 
adds: "I am aware of the danger of studying simplicity of lan- 
guage — but you will find in my blank verse a fulness of phrase when 
the subject requires it," indicating that Southey advocated homely 
language for homely themes, as his practice indicates. 

So much for the general phenomena of the Bristol Eddy, in which 
the exacts limits between individual and communal activity can 
never be determined. A few words may be added on such works of 
each poet as have not already been considered. Poole wrote no 
poetry; and the verse of Thelwall was so exceedingly bad that had 
he been condemned for literary instead of political sins we should 
all sympathize with his judges. Enough has been said about the 
perishable rhyming ware of Lovell, Lloyd, and the Cottles. A word 
further should be added, however, about Joseph Cottle as a publisher. 
He was a vain man, and in his "Reminiscences" tried to make the 
public consider him too much of a Maecenas, with the result that it 
has considered him too much of an ass. No one can read the corre- 
spondence of the Bristol and Lake poets without feeling their gen- 
uine friendliness toward him; and as business man and financial 
backer he must have given the literary movement a decided impetus. 

[ 58 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

He published practically everything printed by the Bristol authors 
between 1796 and 1798, and apparently on better terms than any 
one else would offer them. He could hardly have grown rich from 
these transactions, for in the autumn of 1798 he quit the publishing 
business — gave up the selling of poetry for the uninterrupted com- 
position of it, thereby inflicting a double wound on the Muses. It 
is hard to take his authorship seriously; but there is reason to believe 
that he encouraged far better poetry than he wrote. In a letter which 
all detractors of honest Joseph should read, Southey wrote to him 
April 20, 1808: "You bought them [his copyrights] on the chance 
of their success, which no London bookseller would have done; and 
had they not been bought, they could not have been published at 
all. Nay, if you had not purchased 'Joan of Arc,' the poem never 
would have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have ob- 
tained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor 
that power which enables me to support it. . . . Your house was 
my house when I had no other. The very money with which I bought 
my wedding-ring and paid my marriage fees, was supplied by you. 
It was with your sisters that I left Edith during my six months' 
absence, and for the six months after my return it was from you 
that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I 
was enabled to live by other means. . . . Sure I am, there never was 
a more generous or a kinder heart than yours; and you will believe 
me when I add, that there does not live that man upon earth whom 
I remember with more gratitude and more affection." According to 
Cottle also, Coleridge wrote on the blank leaf of his own early 
poems: "Had it not been for you, none, perhaps, of them would have 
been published, and many not written." The statements of the ex- 
publisher are "a vain thing for safety"; but we read in Coleridge's 
letter to him that spring: "I feel what I owe you, and independently 
of this I love you as a friend." Half a century later the aged Words- 
worth wrote to Cottle: "And now let me bid you affectionately 
good-bye, with assurance that I do and shall retain to the last a 
remembrance of your kindness and of the many pleasant and happy 
hours which, at one of the most interesting periods of my life, I 
passed in your neighborhood and in your company." 

[ 59 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

No one can judge the verse of Lamb without remembering the 
circumstances under which it was composed. Gradgrind routine and 
domestic calamity had clutched him as between the jaws of a trap 
and would have crushed the sublimely evanescent vision in any one. 
His period of comparative leisure came late in life when many men 
can write good prose but few good poetry, and so he became a great 
essayist, only a minor poet; yet we are not sure that this was what 
nature intended. London society he had practically none; his epis- 
tolary relations with Stowey and Bristol were his social all-in-all. 

Alone, obscure, without a friend, 
A cheerless, solitary thing, 

the wonder is that he accomplished what he did. Out of the bitter- 
ness of broken friendships, and few to break, he distilled at least 
one undying poem, "The Old Familiar Faces"; and his drama of 
"John Woodvil," unspeakably bad in construction, has yet many 
charming lines that carry us back to the forest of Arden and the 
great dramatist that Lamb imitated so crudely but so sincerely. 

In connection with this play we may notice the amount of closet 
drama produced by the Bristol and Stowey writers. In addition to 
Wordsworth's "Borderers," Coleridge's "Osorio," and Lamb's "John 
Woodvil," which was begun in the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," 
Lloyd in that same year wrote his dull drama "The Duke 
D'Ormond," although this was not published until 1822, when it 
appeared as part of a new and greater wave of unactable poetical 
tragedies. 

Of Southey there is more to say, both in praise and blame. Most 
of his short poems and half of his long ones were composed during 
the Bristol period. His "Joan of Arc," published in 1796, is now 
his most unreadable volume, but curiously enough during his early 
life was the most popular of his works. In fact for all the poetry of 
this group public applause seemed inversely as merit. Coleridge's 
uneven and turgid early work got not only better sales but better 
reviews than "The Ancient Mariner," and more favorable comment 
from his fellow poets. In such a discerning critic as Lamb — though 
he was young then — "Joan" roused a burst of enthusiasm that 

[ 60 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

to-day makes us doubt our eyesight. Was it the halo of the French 
Revolution which gave such a factitious value to the story of 
medieval France in her struggle for liberty, or was Lamb blinded 
by friendship and the public by stupidity? This was the first of 
Southey's long epics. ^'Madoc," second in composition though not 
in publication, was a better but very ponderous work. He had had 
it in his mind ever since he was fourteen. It was to be the pillar of 
his reputation. For years he had looked over the neighboring Welsh 
hills, dreaming of that Cymric forerunner of Columbus, and had 
developed a story with a magnificent opportunity for romantic 
atmosphere, the first half being in medieval Wales, the second among 
the Aztec Indians of North America. But that very opportunity 
showed what the poem lacked. Its appeal is almost wholly to intel- 
lectual curiosity, neither to the emotions nor the ear. Haunting 
cadences, poignant pathos, outbursts of rapture it has not to give. 
For the patient professorial brain "Madoc" is not unreadable, but 
its attractions are those of a book of travel, its best remembered 
passages the ones describing Indian customs and accouterments. 
And the appeal to intellectual curiosity can hold only when based 
on facts, not on figments of the imagination. A similar criticism 
could be passed on all Southey's long poems; yet "Thalaba," written 
half near Bristol and half in Spain, has much subdued music and 
much delight of wandering through 

perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. 

There are many passages to which we gladly recur; but a long nar- 
rative poem, like a drama, must depend on its human interest to 
carry it; and here no human interest, not even an allegorical one, 
is genuinely felt. Reading "Thalaba" is hke wandering from room 
to room in a deserted palace, with the gleam of marble, the beauty 
of carvings, dim figures on wavering curtains, and only the monoto- 
nous echo of our own footsteps from chamber to chamber. Southey 
has been condemned for stubborn wrong-headedness in thus per- 
severing with his epic series. That he was on the wrong track is 
unquestionable; but with Lamb saying a propos of "Joan," "On 
the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton"; with Cole- 

[ 6i ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

ridge writing of "Madoc," "I feel as certain, as my mind dare feel 
on any subject, that it would lift you with a spring into a reputation 
that would give immediate sale to your after compositions"; and 
with William Taylor (and Landor later on) urging him to follow 
in the epic footsteps of Milton and Klopstock, — we cannot feel that 
the fault was wholly Southey's. The Bristol Eddy had helped whirl 
him into the wrong course and produced from him three epics in 
half a decade, whereas he produced only two more during over forty 
years. 

In 1799 and 1800 when the sudden poetical harvest was ending, 
Southey garnered its last ears in his "Annual Anthology." Some 
of the contributions are from forgotten minors, and others from 
Mrs. Opie, then just on the eve of her career as a novelist. 
Most of them, however, are from men connected with the Bristol 
Eddy, Southey, Lamb, Lloyd, Coleridge, Southey's friend William 
Taylor, Lamb's friend George Dyer, Humphry Davy, then a young 
and poetical scientist, who came to Bristol just after the departure 
of Wordsworth and Coleridge, besides posthumous poems of Lovell. 
In 1803 Southey very appropriately closed the Bristol chapter of 
his career by editing with Cottle the poetry of Chatterton. 

Before passing on to the two greatest members of the eddy, we 
must pause a moment for that prose poetess who did so much to 
inspire them both, Dorothy Wordsworth. During the Stowey period, 
she, her brother, and Coleridge were, in the words of Professor 
Harper, "three persons and one soul." 

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, 

said her grateful brother; and observations of nature found in her 
Journal turn up again in "Christabel." She has left us no enduring 
poetry of her own; but in the last analysis did she not do a greater 
work for English verse than Joanna Baillie or Mrs. Hemans? 

The poems of Coleridge during his Bristol and Nether Stowey 
period are enduring memorials of three brief stages in the rapid 
unfolding of his genius. The first class are rather bookish echoes of 
late eighteenth-century movements, the supposedly Pindaric ode on 
"The Departing Year," turgid blank verse in the style of eighteenth- 

[ 62 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

century Miltonians, as in the "Religious Musings," and sonnets 
which he frankly entitled as imitations of Bowles. The second class 
comprises blank verse descriptions of nature in more sweet and 
homely language, with less of bad philosophy and much more of 
good observation, "The Nightingale" and "This Lime Tree Bower 
My Prison." Both of these types are paralleled in the verse of his 
associates. Last comes the splendid output of his one annus mirabilis, 
the brief harvest on which his reputation depends: "The Ancient 
Mariner," "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," "The Three Graves," 
"Love," and the similar, though inferior "Ballad of the Dark Ladie." 
These in musical key are related to Wordsworth's output during 
the same period, a result of the same close intimacy. All these poems 
of Coleridge, and every one written by Wordsworth at Alfoxden,* 
including "Peter Bell," are in iambic 8's or 8's and 6's closely akin 
to the swing of the old ballad. Neither of these men used that rhythm 
so consistently at any other time. The favorite metre for Words- 
worth and Coleridge alike, whether before or after this period, was 
the pentameter line, which both used in sonnet, couplet, stanza, and 
blank verse. Also in both poets at this time the language takes on 
a simplicity not characteristic of the man. Coleridge, not only before 
but after this period, not only in verse but in prose and in private 
correspondence, had an elaborate, at times a turgid, style. The 
poetical diction of Wordsworth, starting from the rhetorical heights 
of Erasmus Darwin, descended into the valley of humility in the 
"Lyrical Ballads," and for nearly twenty years afterward climbed a 
gradual ascent toward the dignified language of Milton. The Stowey 
period represents what is best in Coleridge, what is second best in 
Wordsworth, but not what is typical in either. It was not the perma- 
nent Wordsworth, the disciple of Milton, the dignified author of 
"Michael," but a temporary experimenting Wordsworth, who wrote 
of a woman's grief: 

It dried her body like a cinder, 

And almost turned her brain to tinder.f 

* He wrote "Tintern Abbey" after leaving Alfoxden. 
t "The Thorn," original version. 

[ 63 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

The peculiar characteristics in the verse of this period must be 
partly due to the influence of Percy's "Reliques." They were not 
confined to Wordsworth and Coleridge. Southey, who enumerates the 
"Reliques" among the books that influenced his growing mind, 
between 1796 and 1800 wrote a number of poems which he also 
called "ballads," several of which were in the regular 8's and 6's of 
"The Ancient Mariner," "The Three Graves," and "We Are Seven." 
Southey's ballads have no great merit, and deal in a rather crude 
supernaturalism unlike either the airy fictions of "Christabel" or the 
homespun realities of "Goody Blake." Yet they diverge from the 
previous and subsequent manner of the author as do the poems of 
his friends, and do occasionally suggest these: 

The night was calm, the night was dark; 

No star was in the sky; 
The wind it waved the willow boughs; 

The stream flowed quietly. 

The night was calm, the air was still; 

Sweet sung the nightingale: 
The soul of Jonathan was soothed; 

His heart began to fail. 

Incidentally in 1800 Lamb composed two poems entitled "Ballads" 
sufficiently unlike those of his friends, but the only ballad imitations 
that he is known to have written. The ballad type appears in Southey 
in 1796, in Coleridge 1797, in Wordsworth 1798, suggesting a very 
natural channel for more than one form of influence: from some 
other member of the group to Coleridge, then from Coleridge to 
his friend. The original version of "The Ancient Mariner" bor- 
rowed several archaic words from Percy's eighteenth-century "Sir 
Cauline": and the "fair Christabelle" of the same ballad may have 
mothered the "sweet Christabel" of the greater genius. The sudden 
vogue of Biirger's "Lenore" in 1796 had quickened interest in folk 
poetry. 

Many characteristics of the "Lyrical Ballads" must also have 
owed something to local atmosphere. The low, though beautiful, 
Quantock hills, the emotional and obsequious peasant of the south- 

[ 64 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

west, as shown in "Simon Lee" and "The Last of the Flock," are 
in marked contrast with the frowning peaks of Cumberland, and the 
silent pride of her poor, the men of "Michael" and "The Brothers." 
All that gets into the blood. This is especially true of a landscape 
lover such as Wordsworth, whose poetry, both in rhythm and 
mood, changes with the scenery through which he travels. He has one 
set of metres and thoughts on Highland heather, another by his 
native lakes, and a third at Nether Stowey. The restful charm of the 
rolling country has crept into his metre and diction, and into his 
conception of character also. In his "Lyrical Ballads" the emphasis 
is laid on the pathos, not the dignity, of the poor man's life; in the 
later "Michael," "The Brothers," "The Leech Gatherer," and the 
sixth and seventh books of "The Excursion," the emphasis is re- 
versed. His "ballads" have grown like plants from the soil of the 
West Country, and the germ of almost every one of them can be 
found in some definite locality or incident there. As for Coleridge, 
although he was Anglo-Saxon in blood, his family had lived in a 
region full of Celtic people and Celtic traditions; there is a Welsh or 
Irish glamour about the rarest of his poetry: and perhaps he could 
do his best work on the borderland of the Cymric peoples. We read 
in Mr. Salmon's book that a "characteristic that links the Quantocks 
with the farther West, is the presence of pixies. The pixy is the spe- 
cial Celtic variant of the ordinary fairy or elf, and it only lingers now 
in the West of England. Its chief homes are on Dartmoor, and in 
Cornwall; but its presence on Exmoor, and the Quantocks prove con- 
tinuance of Celtic tradition. . . . Within living memory a farmer is 
said to have seen some threshing his corn, in a barn near Holford 
village." The village in question is close to Alfoxden. Hazlitt records 
that Coleridge at Nether Stowey complained because Wordsworth 
"was not prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of 
the place." Certainly there is a magic about the first part of "Chris- 
tabel," written at Nether Stowey, which is missing from the second, 
composed among the Lakes, and the difference may not be wholly 
due to opium. In sharp contrast to the fairy tales of Stowey, Pro- 
fessor Harper says that "few mountainous regions in old populated 
countries are so unblessed with legends as the English Lake district. 

[ 65 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

It has virtually no local folk-songs." So, although in one sense 
"Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner" belong to the most un- 
localized type of poetry, they originated in a district favorable to 
their nature. It was to the song of the nightingale at dark and the 
deep bass of the ocean by day, against a background of fairy legend 
and unruined local faith that they 

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet. 

One feature of the Bristol Eddy which has never been emphasized 
is that it was financially a subsidized movement. In January, 1798, 
the Wedgewood brothers began their annual payment to Coleridge 
of £150 a year, that he might be free to write poetry, and before 
that he had received financial aid from Lloyd, who was wealthy. 
Wordsworth since 1795 had been living mainly on the income from 
£900 left him by Raisley Calvert. Genuine assistance was given by 
Cottle to both Coleridge and Southey. All this may appear very 
sordid to people who condemn economics; it would not to Words- 
worth himself, who in his sonnet "To the Memory of Raisley Cal- 
vert" said that the legacy made his poetical career possible: 

That I, if frugal and severe, might stray 
Where'er I liked; and finally array 
My temples with the Muse's diadem. 

And it was the man who received no such aid, who was under the 
financial pressure from which the others were free, Charles Lamb, 
who during this period, and for many years after, produced the work 
least worthy of his powers. 

The literary activity around Bristol represented neither a school 
nor an enduring social group nor a definitely formed theory of art. 
It did give encouragement and inspiration. It did form individual 
friendships that lasted till death; and through these it passed on the 
torch of poetical enthusiasm to later groups and schools. It began 
a new regime in poetry, not by its critical theories but by the encour- 
agement of genius. What Burns and Blake, Chatterton and Cowper 

[ 66 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND BRISTOL 

groping alone had failed to do, was done at last; and a new creative 
era for literature began 

On sea-ward Quantock's heathy hills, 
Where quiet sounds from hidden rills 

Float here and there, like things astray, 
And high o'er head the skylark shrills. 



[ 67 ] 



CHAPTER III 

The Scotch Group and the Antiquarian Movement 
in Poetry (^1800-1805 and thereafter) 

The end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth 
found almost all creative poetry of high rank active in two small 
areas: around and to the southwest of Bristol — with allowance for 
the fact that Wordsworth moved in the interim to Westmoreland; 
and around and to the southwest of Edinburgh. By 1795 the best 
poetry of Burns, Cowper, and Blake was already written, to say 
nothing of the fact that the latter was utterly unknown. Crabbe was 
in the midst of his twenty-year silence, Rogers in the midst of one 
almost equally long. Byron had not risen, and Moore had not found 
himself. At the Scottish capital Campbell in 1799 gave the world 
his "Pleasures of Hope"; and near by a little knot of young Scotch- 
men, with whom Campbell came in contact but to whom he did not 
belong, laid the foundation for a new literary development in some 
ways like, in others markedly unlike, that around the banks of the 
Severn. 

The Bristol and northern eddies had certain features in common. 
Both were made up of young men. Both developed a tendency 
toward simple language in poetry. Both showed in metre and other 
respects the influence of Percy's "Reliques." Both were temporarily 
affected by the popular German wave and later shook off a large 
part of its influence. Yet not less fundamental than the likenesses 
were the differences between them. The Bristol authors were revo- 
lutionary and permeated with French and German thought; the 
other body conservative and traditionally Scotch, even provincial, 
in their outlook on life. Wordsworth and Coleridge were interested 
in abstract philosophy looking toward the future; the Scotch writers 

[ 68 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

in concrete research revealing the past. The southern poets were 
often introspective and at times melancholy; the northern ones, in 
their writings at least, objective and energetically serene, and as 
men more athletic in body and more martial in spirit than Lamb, 
Lloyd, Southey, and Coleridge. Each eddy began independently; 
the Bristol and Stowey poets hearing nothing of their Scottish 
brethren before 1802, and their Scottish brethren knowing but little 
of them until after that date. 

The center and leader of the northern group was, of course, 
Walter Scott; but it would be untrue to think of the others as mere 
imitators and satellites of his. They had been working or training 
along similar lines before they met him; they gave up neither their 
' characteristics nor literary ideals in working with him; and he him- 
self, likable and leading character though he was, had not at that 
'■ time been recognized, even locally, as a great writer. 

Between 1795, when he was fired by William Taylor's translation 
I of Biirger's "Lenore," and 1799, when he published his translation 
; of Goethe's "Goetz von Berlichingen," Scott was temporarily carried 
! away by the popular German tide. He printed his own translation 
' of "Lenore" and "The Wild Huntsman," he wrote a dramatic Ger- 
I man adaptation, "The House of Aspen," which he somewhat apolo- 
' getically printed many years later; and he also translated or adapted 
j in manuscript other poems and dramas, which his cannie Scotch 
sense kept him from inflicting upon a long-suffering world. With all 
the enthusiasm of youth he named his cavalry horse Lenore and 
\ carried from the office of a prominent Edinburgh surgeon a skull 
! and crossbones to adorn his own sanctum. This Germanic spasm, 
I though it left permanent traces on his writings, appears to have 
I abated by 1800. Goethe's "Goetz," with all its faults, showed him by 
: contrast the absurdities of Goethe's imitators; and the revulsion in 
! popular feeling throughout Great Britain must have told on a man 
j so young as the translator and so free from literary conceit. He 
I abandoned his temporary enthusiasm for another that had always 
I been coexistent with it, that had begun earlier in his life and was 
destined to influence him far more, an enthusiasm for a type of 

[ 69 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

literature in some ways akin to the German, in others wholly 
different, the Ballad poetry of the Scotch Border. 

Though the son of an Edinburgh lawyer, Scott had dwelt from 
childhood on the memories of the old border chiefs who were his 
ancestors. At twenty-one he had visited the wildest regions of 
Liddesdale, partly ''to pick up some of the ancient riding ballads, 
said to be still preserved among the descendants of the moss- 
troopers." During seven years after this he made "raids" in Liddes- 
dale, gathering knowledge of life in these unsophisticated regions 
and also materials that were later used in the "Minstrelsy of the 
Scottish Border." Although for a long time he would seem to have 
been impelled by a young man's love of seeing life rather than by 
a definite aim of producing a book or encouraging a literary move- 
ment, yet he was preparing for both. No man could be less like the 
author of "Christabel" than he; but he shared with that wayward 
genius the power of attracting men. As Coleridge gradually drew 
together the poetical followers of Rousseau and metaphysics, one 
by one, so Scott gradually impressed into his service every anti- 
quarian in the region until he had formed a little cohort of men who 
transmuted antiquarianism into poetry. The first of these was Dr. 
Elliot of Cleughhead, whom Scott met in 1792, and who before that 
event had gathered a large MSS. collection of border ballads. In- 
spired by his young friend, for whom he "would have gane through 
fire and water," Dr. Elliot now mined with redoubled vigor the ballad 
veins of the mountain region. Incidentally, as an influence on Scott's 
mood, though not a source for the "Minstrelsy," we should mention 
that one of his most intimate friends both now and after was Thomas 
Thompson, called by Lockhart, "the first legal antiquary of our 
time in Scotland." In 1798 "Monk" Lewis made a journey to Edin- 
burgh; and, having already heard that Scott had a few German 
translations, and having corresponded with him about them, now 
made his acquaintance. Lewis was a pseudo-poet and pseudo- 
scholar; but he was then collecting unearthly ballads for the "hob- 
goblin repast" of his "Tales of Wonder," and so waked a responsive 
chord at once in the German and the ballad chamber of his friend's 
heart. He included several of Scott's early diablerie poems in his 

[ 70 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

unfortunate "Tales of Wonder" (1801), used his influence with the 
publisher Bell to get "Goetz" printed, and introduced Scott to Lon- 
don society when the latter ran down there manuscript hunting in 
the British Museum in 1799. Lewis, as a famous writer, was listened 
to with extreme deference by his greater but more modest com- 
panion, gave Scott lessons in metre, fanned his youthful love for the 
terrible, and in various ways, mostly unfortunate, became a passing 
part of the northern literary eddy. 

It was not, however, until 1800 that there really existed a poetico- 
antiquarian group. Richard Heber, brother of the future poet, 
happened to spend that winter in Edinburgh; and, being a learned 
man with a profound knowledge of medieval literature, soon became 
a welcome fellow worker with the as yet unrecognized "wizard of 
the north." In an obscure bookshop Heber found an uncouthly 
dressed and phenomenally well-read young man named John Leyden, 
whom he introduced to Scott. It was the junction of two streams; 
and Leyden's, though the lesser, was by no means a mere tributary. 
Reared in the wildest recesses of Roxburghshire, gifted with a most 
phenomenal power of acquiring knowledge, he was at once a wild 
borderer and a great scholar. While Scott had been publishing Ger- 
man adaptations, he had, for three or four years past, been giving 
the public translations from the Greek, Latin, and northern tongues, 
printed in The Edinburgh Magazine. Like Scott, he was already an 
enthusiastic collector of border ballads, and possessed a first-hand 
knowledge of them far exceeding that of the Selkirk sheriff or any 
one else. Though the "Minstrelsy" had already been planned, and 
would have come out had Leyden never entered the arena, it might 
but for him have been a much smaller and far less epoch-making 
work. Ballantyne, who was to print it, told Leyden in 1800 that a 
single moderately sized volume ought to hold the materials; whereat 
his companion answered with some heat: "I have more than that 
in my head myself: we shall turn out three or four such volumes at 
least." The "Minstrelsy" proper eventually consisted of three vol- 
umes, with "Sir Tristrem" edited in a fourth; apparently the work 
was the realization of Leyden's conception well-nigh as much as of 
his friend's. Leyden walked over forty miles and back to find an 

[ 71 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

old person who knew the last remainder of a ballad fragment; and 
much of the material in the essays of the "Minstrelsy/' even when 
worded by Scott, must have been furnished by him. In spite of his 
eccentricities, the two men were devoted friends, ceasing to be 
frequent companions only when Leyden in 1803 sailed to India. In 
the year of his departure he wrote: 

Oh Scott! with whom, in youth's serenest prime, 
I wove with careless hand the fairy rhyme. 
Bade chivalry's barbaric pomp return. 
And heroes wake from every mouldering urn! 

and he recalls regretfully 

The wild-wood walks by Esk's romantic shore, 

The circled hearth, which ne'er was wont to fail 

In cheerful joke, or legendary tale, 

Thy mind, whose fearless frankness nought could move, 

Thy friendship, like an elder brother's love. 

The older and greater poet gave a corresponding tribute in "The 
Lord of the Isles" to his friend's "bright and brief career." 

In the same year that Scott met Leyden, he also made the 
acquaintance of William Laidlaw, who became his lifelong friend 
and at once a subordinate and an equal. Laidlaw is a minor poet, 
briefly mentioned in some collections, and deserves only a very small 
niche in the circle. He was, however, of some assistance in preparing 
"The Minstrelsy." He became the means, also, of introducing his 
new friend in 1801 to another of many years' standing, a man far 
below Scott in early advantages and ultimate achievement, but in 
natural genius not always his inferior, the shepherd poet, James 
Hogg. Hogg had been brought up in the midst of poverty, ignorance, 
and superstition, which inevitably stunted his great natural powers, 
but which none the less peculiarly fitted him to understand the 
attitude of mind that in bygone ages had produced folk poetry. His 
mother, from whom he apparently derived his genius, had a remark- 
able memory filled with ballads handed down by oral tradition ; and, 
although a transitory discipleship of Burns first made him write 
verse, he became eventually the poet of the folk ballads that had 

[ 72 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

lulled his infancy. For years before 1800 he and William Laidlaw, 
on whose father's farm he was a hired laborer, had indulged in 
poetical bouts and competitions in the fields, like the pastoral shep- 
herds of Vergil. Scott, visiting the Hoggs in their humble cottage, 
heard old ballads and very frank criticism from both mother and 
son, while preparing the third volume of his "Minstrelsy." Mean- 
while the two earlier volumes of that work had kindled Hogg into 
a ballad poet. "I was not satisfied with many of the imitations of 
the ancients. I immediately chose a number of traditional facts, and 
set about imitating the different manners of the ancients myself." 
Several of these ballads, "The Death of Douglas," "Sir David 
Graeme" (which was an avowed imitation of "The Twa Corbies" 
in "The Minstrelsy"), and "Lord Derwent," are full of genuine 
poetry and Border atmosphere. 

The lady to her window hied, 

That opened owr the banks o' Tyne; 

or 

Red blazed the beacon on Pownell; 

On Skiddaw there were three; 
The warder's horn, on muir and fell, 

Was heard continually. 

It must be remembered that these poems, though called out by 
Scott's "Minstrelsy," were not written in imitation but as a reaction 
from it or correction for it. Even where they are not great they are 
genuine, the product of the Border soil. "His poetic faculty and 
imaginative creations," in the judgment of Professor Veitch, "were 
almost as thoroughly the growth of the district and circumstances 
in which he was born and bred, as the birk by the burn or 
the bracken in the glen." 

In 1800 and 1801 Scott drew into the vortex of his labors two 
English antiquaries, whose characters had about as much similarity 
as light and darkness. Joseph Ritson was a half insane scholar whom 
the bland sheriff of Selkirkshire brought for a moment socially into 
his group, only to be expelled by his own impossible mannerisms 
and the teasing of Leyden. Ritson, who was, with all his faults, a 

[ 73 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

learned, and for his day, an unusually accurate scholar, proved a 
valuable aid to Scott though a very unwelcome guest to his wife. 
George Ellis was a London antiquary and charming man of the 
world, his connection with Scott, like that of Lamb with the Bristol 
authors, being mainly epistolary and yet exceedingly cordial. Their 
friendship continued unbroken until the death of Ellis in 1815; and 
their letters after 1801 are loaded with antiquarian detail. Leyden, 
when he came to London in 1803 on his way to India, was intro- 
duced by letter to Ellis, received much kindness at his hands, and 
left a record of it in a manuscript poem quoted by Lockhart praising 
"That kind squeyere Ellis" and ridiculing "that dwarf" Ritson. 

A somewhat later addition to the group was Robert Jamieson, a 
poor young school teacher and also a minor poet and enthusiastic 
ballad collector. Being at work on a ballad collection of his own, he 
was a friend and fellow spirit, but not an active assistant in "The 
Minstrelsy." Scott in fact said: "I therefore, as far as the nature of 
my work permitted, sedulously avoided anticipating any of his 
materials." Various other antiquaries and authors of occasional 
stanzas had some social or literary connection; but though they 
showed the national spirit, they have no individual significance. 
Scott, Leyden, Hogg, Laidlaw, and Jamieson are all included in 
J. G. Wilson's "Poets and Poetry of Scotland," and may be con- 
sidered as genuine children of the Muses. They formed to some 
degree a social group, which was the nucleus of a more far-reaching 
literary eddy just at the turn of the century. 

Every one of these men, even the uneducated Hogg, was in some 
way an antiquarian and scholar, a gatherer and preserver of the 
literature of the past. This trait was not inspired by one man in all 
the others; it appeared in every one before he joined the group, 
though the influence and example of Scott naturally increased it. 
They stood as a body for the poetry of a traditional past, not a 
medieval Utopia, like that of "Christabel" and "The Eve of St. 
Agnes," but a national life that had been. From the depths of their 
hearts they would have cried about the wild life of the border 
ballads what their fellow countryman Carlyle said about the twelfth- 
century monastery: "It was a reality and is none." Nowhere else 

[ 74 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

in Great Britain at that time was there so close a union of scholarly- 
accuracy and wild romance, of history and poetry. It was this feel- 
ing that related them so closely to Ellis, who as a Londoner and the 
clever satirist of The Anti- Jacobin, was in many ways so far apart 
from them. His "Early English Metrical Romances" and Scott's 
"Lay of the Last Minstrel" both appeared in 1805 after four years 
of mutual correspondence. Ellis's book contained abstracts in prose 
of many old romances from the King Arthur and Charlemagne 
cycles: romances of Merlin, Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Hamp- 
toun, and others, and, like "The Minstrelsy," gave introductory 
historical essays. Inasmuch as "The Minstrelsy" was the direct 
child of Percy's "Reliques," J. O. Halliwell was asserting the kin- 
ship of Scott and the author of the "Metrical Romances" when he 
said: "Ellis, in fact, did for ancient romance what Percy had pre- 
viously accomplished for early poetry." Scott with fraternal enthu- 
siasm declared that Ellis "transferred all the playful fascinations 
of a humor, as delightful as it was uncommon, into the forgotten 
poetry of the ancient minstrels, and gave life and popularity to 
compositions which had till then been buried in the closet of the 
antiquary." 

The next year Jamieson published a similar work, his "Popular 
Ballads and Songs, from Tradition, Manuscript, and scarce editions, 
with Translations of Similar Pieces from the Ancient Danish Lan- 
guage and a few Originals by the Editor." Though now hardly 
twenty-seven he had been at work on it for years. In 1800 he had 
first met Scott, learned of the projected "Minstrelsy," and found 
that that hitherto unsuspected work and his own "were nearly in an 
equal state of forwardness." His new friend later especially praised 
his discovery of the kinship between Scottish and Scandinavian 
legends, "a circumstance which no antiquary had hitherto so much 
as suspected." Jamieson had a scholarly love for accuracy. His 
"True Thomas and the Queen of Elfland" is in archaic spelling and 
diction, in contrast to the same story adapted in Scott's "Thomas 
the Rhymer." And it was his ambition to give his Danish folk poetry 
"as nearly as possible in the exact state in which it grew amid the 
rocks of Norway, and in the valleys of Jutland." 

[ 75 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

More important than either of these works was "The Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border," for which the credit must mainly go to 
Scott, but in which Leyden at least should be considered an exten- 
sive collaborator. Not counting the avowed imitations of Scott and 
his friends, it contained between seventy and eighty ballads, most 
of which were genuine folk poetry, and forty-three of which had 
never before been printed. Scott divided these into two classes, his- 
torical and romantic; a distinction generally adhered to by northern 
ballad scholars, and enunciated a third of a century later by the 
Scotch poet Motherwell. "The Historical Ballad relates events, 
which we either know actually to have taken place, or which, at 
least, making due allowance for the exaggerations of poetical tradi- 
tion, we may readily conceive to have had some foundation in his- 
tory." The romantic ballads are "intended to comprehend such 
legends as are current upon the border, relating to fictitious and 
marvellous adventures." The latter class, he tells us, "are much more 
extensively known among the peasantry of Scotland than the 
[historical] border raid ballads, the fame of which is in general 
confined to the mountains where they were originally composed." 
The romantic ballads connect on all sides with the general problems 
of folk poetry, with Percy's "Reliques," with similar poems in Den- 
mark and other countries. They remind us that "The Minstrelsy" 
was only one great step in literary evolution moving on throughout 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; that four years after 
the publishing of Scott's collection the yet more momentous one of 
Von Arnim, "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" appeared in Germany, and 
that eight years after that for far-away Serbia oral poetry current 
through centuries was first given out in print. The "historical bal- 
lads," though some of them had appeared in Percy and elsewhere, 
are much more local, with the smack of the soil in them at every 
turn. They are so numerous in "The Minstrelsy" and so rare in 
"The Reliques" that the general atmosphere of the two collections 
is markedly unlike, that of the later work far more adventurous, 
martial, and touched with daredevil humor. There is less pathos 
than in Percy, and far less of sentimentality, but instead border 

[ 76 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

fighting, lifting of cattle, rescuing of imprisoned freebooters, whole- 
sale robbery, and yet a rough but inflexible code of honor. 

For I've luved naething in my life, 
I weal dare say it, but honesty, 

declares the raider Johnie Armstrong. The legally trained editor of 
"The Minstrelsy," no doubt, smiled in reading how the ancient 
Sir Walter Scott was rebuked by his king for condemning a thief: 

For, had everye honeste man his awin kye, 
A right pure* clan thy name wad be. 

A contemporary said that "The Minstrelsy" contained the material 

for a hundred romances; and it is easy to find in "Kempion" and 

"Tamlane" the Alice Brand story of "The Lady of the Lake," in 

"The Battle of Loudonhill" and "The Battle of Bothwellbridge" 

hints for "Old Mortality," in "The Laird of Laminton" ("Katherine 

Janfarie") the germ of "Lochinvar," and in "The Gay Goss Hawk" 

the story of James Hogg's "Mary Scott." As for the debt of later 

, poems in spirit and language, it can hardly be overemphasized. 

j The modern imitations include verse by several negligible figures, 

( among them the uninspiring names of Matt Lewis and Anna Sew- 

' ard; but we need consider only the five poems by Leyden and the 

I seven by Scott. Both authors were by blood and tradition the chil- 

i dren of the wild Border spirit. Leyden tells us that when the plaintive 

I strain of Flodden 

In early youth rose soft and sweet. 
My life-blood, through each throbbing vein 

With wild tumultuous passion beat. 
And oft, in fancied might, I trode 

The spear-strewn path to Fame's abode. . . . 
Rude border chiefs, of mighty name 

And iron soul, who sternly tore 
The blossoms from the tree of fame. 

And purpled deep their tints with gore. 
Rush from brown ruins scarred with age, 
That frown o'er haunted Hermitage. 



•poor 



[ 77 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Scott had the self-same mood: 

And still I thought that shattered tower 

The mightiest work of human power, 

And marvelled as the aged hind 

With some strange tale bewitched my mind 

Of forayers, who with headlong force 

Down from that strength had spurred their horse, 

Their southern rapine to renew 

Far in the distant Cheviots blue, 

And, home returning, filled the hall 

With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. 

Methought that still with trump and clang 

The gateway's broken arches rang; 

Methought grim features, seamed with scars, 

Glared through the window's rusty bars. 

How could we expect Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, reared in 
localities where there had been neither war nor garrisoned fortress 
for five hundred years, to write like these men, or even like the 
milder Hogg, brought up from infancy on tales of Ettrick Forest, 
"that scene of many a bloody conflict"? Morton says that the long 
dissertation on fairies in the second volume of "The Minstrelsy" 
was almost entirely the work of Leyden; and perhaps it was because 
his head was so full of this that his ballad imitations had even more 
of the supernatural than Scott's. His Lord Soulis and Keeldar are 
chiefs of the border, but also deal in magic of the wildest type. 
Instead of 

the good steel sperthe, 
Full ten pound weight and more 

of "The Eve of St. John," we learn of Soulis 

No danger he fears, for a charm'd sword he wears; 
Of adderstone the hilt. 

Scott's warriors all wear mortal armor, "shield, and jack, and 
acton"; but Leyden's Keeldar tells his wife: 

My casque of sand, by a mermaid's hand. 
Was formed beneath the sea. 

[ 78 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

Scott's poetry, especially "Cadyow Castle" and "The Eve of St. 
John," is more dramatic and on the whole better; yet one cannot 
help feeling that Leyden's belief in the unseen, like that of Hogg, 
had been less damped by contact with urban civilization. There is 
an admirable faith and vigor in his unearthly narratives, though they 
have neither Coleridge's music nor Browning's matter. 

And many a weary night went by, 

As in the lonely cave he lay. 
And many a sun rolled through the sky. 

And poured its beams on Colonsay; 
And oft, beneath the silver moon. 

He heard afar the mermaid sing, 
And oft, to many a melting tune. 

The shell-formed lyres of ocean ring. 

Scott's own ballads, like the collected ones, divide into historical 
and romantic (or supernatural) ones, the former class being repre- 
sented by the death of Murray in "Cadyow Castle," the latter by 
the weird women of "Glenfinlas" and the ghostly lover in "The Eve 
of St. John." These two elements continue to alternate through 
Scott's later poetry, although the "fictitious and marvellous adven- 
tures" consistently preponderate over what "we may readily con- 
ceive to have had some foundation in history." 

Besides his part in "The Minstrelsy," Leyden in 1801 published 
an edition of "The Complaynt of Scotland" with a scholarly pre- 
liminary dissertation, and in 1803 his longest original poem, "Scenes 
of Infancy." This was begun, and its general tone determined, some 
time before his meeting with Scott; and it was composed at intervals 
far apart. The result is a patchwork of moods. At times there is 
pronounced medieval romanticism, at times the mild eighteenth- 
century manner of Rogers and Goldsmith, whose couplet he uses. 

Here oft in sweetest sounds is heard the chime 
Of bells unholy from the fairy clime; 

but at other times we hear less poetical, even if "holier" music, such 
as this: 

[ 79 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Blest are the sons of life's sequestered vale: 
No storms of fate their humble heads assail. 

It must be remembered that none of these Scotch writers had any 
hostility to Pope. They had the same reverence for him that they 
had for any great poet on whom a reasonable amount of antique 
dust had accumulated. They regarded him as a chivalrous man might 
regard a woman, a bright phenomenon to be admired and enjoyed 
but not copied, because belonging to a different world of experience. 
Perhaps also the more neo-classic passages were influenced by 
Campbell, whom Leyden had introduced to Scott, and afterwards 
quarreled with. The poem is loaded with details of the Border life 
and landscape. From the verse which Leyden wrote later in India 
that Scotch atmosphere has gone, his poetry, in the words of Shelley, 
taking on the color of the leaves under which he passed. 

Two works of Scott which had originally been planned as parts 
of "The Minstrelsy" outgrew their intended vehicle and appeared 
in separate binding. These were his edition of the ancient "Sir 
Tristrem" and his "Lay of the Last Minstrel." By a division which 
may appear arbitrary but which we believe defensible, we shall 
separate the "Lay" from the following long romances. "Marmion" 
and "Rokeby" were written by a man already famous, becoming 
daily less and less part of a local circle, more and more a citizen of 
the great literary world, deriving steadily smaller and smaller help 
from the companions whom he overshadowed. The "Lay" was 
conceived by a man still comparatively obscure, and was probably 
more of a communal product than the others, written wholly by one 
man but evolved in the atmosphere of a group. Scott had evidently 
developed some mental dependence on Leyden, for in his verse 
argument with Heber he laments that 

Leyden aids, alas! no more, 
My cause with many-languaged lore. 

The most famous passage in the "Lay," 

If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
[ 80 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

has much likeness to one in "Scenes of Infancy," probably written 
earlier, and apparently "by the pale moonlight": 

Deserted Melrose! oft with holy dread 
I trace thy ruins mouldering o'er the dead; 
While, as the fragments fall, wild fancy hears 
The solemn steps of old departed years. . . . 
Where pealing organs through the pillar'd fane 
Swell'd clear to heaven devotion's sweetest strain, 
The bird of midnight hoots* with dreary tone, 
And sullen echoes through the cloisters moan.f . . . 
Ye mossy sculptures, on the roof emboss'd. 
Like wreathing icicles congeal'd by frost! 
Each branching window, and each fretted shrine, 
Which peasants still to fairy handsj assign. 

There was probably no borrowing here; but there were two similar 
growths from a common soil of thought. As an evidence of the fun- 
damental difference between the authors of the Scotch and Bristol 
eddies, we should remember that Tintern Abbey is as beautiful as 
Melrose, and was visited by most of the near-by poets ; yet it called 
out no great verse from them. The "Lines" written near Tintern 
Abbey ignore the splendid ruin to talk of nature and psychology. 
Forty years later the magnificent remains of Furness Abbey merely 
reminded Wordsworth that 

A soothing spirit follows in the way 
That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing. 

Other evidences occur of studies common to Leyden and Scott. 
The central incident of Canto II in the "Lay" is foreshadowed in 
Leyden's "Lord Soulis": 

The black spae-book from his breast he took, 

Impressed with many a warlock spell: 
And the book it was wrote by Michael Scott, 

Who held in awe the fiends of hell. 

* Cf. "Lay," II, i, 14. 
t Cf. "Lay," II, xvi, 3. 
t Cf . "Lay," II, xi, 4. 

[81 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

They buried it deep, where his bones they sleep, 

That mortal man might never it see: 
But Thomas did save it from the grave. 

When he returned from Faerie. 

The third, fourth, and fifth cantos of the "Lay" are in the spirit of 
the ''historical" ballads. There is no supernatural element but that 
of the goblin page, which is minor and handled in a very matter- 
of-fact mood. The theme is the rough martial life of the border, 
substantially as it actually occurred, the poetry of adventurous 
realism. The first and second cantos, and most of the sixth, unite 
the spirit of the "romantic" or supernatural ballad with influences 
from more learned poets of England. The awful and unearthly over- 
weighs the tangible. The metre varies and grows consciously lit- 
erary. The influence of "Christabel," which the author had heard 
recited, is obvious in the first canto; the second adds what was best 
in the Gothic tale of terror, with the genuine thrill that Ann Rad- 
cliffe had felt ten years before in Furness Abbey, and the imagina- 
tive medievalism of Tom Warton. There is some likeness between 
the opening of King Arthur's grave in the latter's poem and the 
opening of Michael Scott's. 

There shall thine eye, with wild amaze, 
On his gigantic stature gaze; 
There shalt thou find the monarch laid. 
All in warrior weeds arrayed; 
Wearing in death his helmet crown. 
And weapons huge of old renown. 

Miss Mitford declared "The Grave of King Arthur" "an ode which 
I should, from internal evidence, have pronounced at once to have 
been written by Walter Scott"; and she found in it "the very 
ideas and imagery of the finest part of 'The Lay,' Deloraine's visit 
to Melrose." The songs and final scene of penitent pilgrims in 
Canto VI have little connection with the Border; but deal chiefly 
with magic, with Scandinavian legend, with medieval ritual, and 
the revived "Dies Irae." More good poetry occurs in the "Lay" than 
in any of Scott's other narratives; but it is a mosaic of styles rather 

[ 82 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

than a harmonious work of art, the product of a mind that had not 
yet oriented itself toward the literary currents around it. 

There is a common spirit in all these Scotch poets, great or little. 
It links the world-renowned Sir Walter with scores of his minor 
countrymen of whom the world hardly knew. It persists in the later 
romances and the Waverley novels. It appears in other Scotch 
writers of the period, Joanna Baillie, and later Allan Cunningham 
and William Motherwell. But more than that it is a temper which 
reaches backward and forward through the centuries among the 
greater number of Scotch writers. It may be roughly defined as the 
romance of real adventure, in contrast with the unromantic, unad- 
venturous realism of Crabbe or the visionary, unworldly roman- 
ticism of Coleridge and Blake. Among the wild heights and eventful 
lives of the Scotch, romanticism and realism became identified as 
they could not among tamer landscapes and a more sedentary 
people. In one sense of the word Scotch literature has been romantic 
down through the centuries; but its romanticism was that of wild 
incident and adventure, not of 

The light that never was on sea or land. 

According to Professor Veitch, the interest of the ancient Scottish 
poem "Sir Tristrem" "lies entirely in story and incident, and the 
variations that may be played on the chord of illicit and adventurous 
love." "Action intensely felt and vividly portrayed, the strong sense 
of physical vigor and manliness as the ground and title of honorable 
place and property in the world," are among the chief elements in 
the ancient romances that during the fourteenth and early fifteenth 
centuries represented the literature of Scotland. With the exception 
of illicit love, these are precisely the qualities which mark the 
poetry and prose of Scott, and the verse of his minor friends. They 
are also the salient characteristics of the Scotch novelist Robert 
Stevenson nearly a century later. They can be traced in the pictured 
page of his countryman Carlyle, at once the arch-enemy of pseudo- 
romance and the most romantic of historians. Much in these 
northern poets that has been ascribed to the "romantic movement" 
is a racial trait, reaching forward and backward through centuries, 

[ 83 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 
and utterly unlike the poetry of Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth, 
Blake and even of Scott's avowed imitators below the Tweed. 
There was, perhaps, a new interest in landscape beauty which ran 
across the ancestral channel, merely coloring it without changing 
its course; but even this had made Thomson a poet m the height 
of the Augustan age. 

There is another consideration, at once racial and geographical, 
in connection with this revival of ballad poetry. It is generally 
agreed among scholars that northern England and southern Scot- 
land received a considerable infusion of Scandinavian blood from 
their Danish invaders. The literature of Denmark is richer in folk 
poetry than any other in Europe; and it was in this Border region 
marked by the infusion of Danish blood that most of the English 
and Scotch ballads were found. Moreover, as Jamieson first pointed 
out, there are many marked parallels between these ballads and 
those of Denmark. Both "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" 
and the original poems of the period represent a poetic tradition 
partly derived from Danish seed and developed by a people whose 
blood was probably part Danish and part Saxon. The result was a 
literature distinctly different from that of either the pure Anglo- 
Saxon or the Celt. A comparison of "Christabel" and "The Irish 
Melodies" with "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" shows a common 
spirit of the age striking across different racial, as well as personal, 
tendencies, with resulting likenesses but unlikenesses greater still. 

"This Scandinavian population," says Professor Veitch, "has 
certainly left its impress on the unwritten compositions of the north 
of England and the Lowlands of Scotland, and through these now 
on the literature of our time. The Saxon had neither, as has been 
well said, 'the pathos which inspires the bardic songs of the van- 
quished Cymri, the exulting imagination which reigns in the sagas 
of the north, nor the dramatic life which animates everywhere the 
legendary tales that light up the dim beginnings of a people's his- 
tory.' The Scandinavian genius, on the other hand, was essentially 
bardic. And it sung of action, of deeds of daring, and of battle. That 
intense ballad spirit, which loved and celebrated personal deeds, 
to the exclusion nearly of all else, through the middle period of 

[ 84] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

Scottish history, and which was preeminently developed in the 
north of England, the Scandinavian area of settlement, and in the 
Lowlands of Scotland, seems to have been an outcome mainly of 
the Danish and Norwegian blood. The frame of the old ballad even, 
as well as its animating soul, was a legacy of the ardour, the life, 
and the idiosyncrasy of the Northmen who left their descendants 
in our glens. And several of the refrains which have come down to 
us through the years, and from what we suppose are our Scottish 
ancestors, are really runes that were chanted long ago by the bards 
of the sea-lords from Scandinavia, when they sung of loyalty to 
hero and successful chief." 

It was natural that the new revival of Scotch literature should 
originate near the Border. Historically, says Professor Veitch, the 
Tweed has been the heart of the Lowlands, "so far at least as strong 
bold action, the gradual growth of history, tradition, legend, the 
continuous flow of song, ballad, and music, wholly native, have 
moved the feelings and moulded the imagination, not only of the 
people of the district, but of the whole land of Scotland." They 
moved the feelings and molded the imagination of people other than 
the Scotch and utterly dissimilar to them. "I have been indebted to 
the North for more than I shall ever be able to acknowledge," wrote 
Wordsworth to Allan Cunningham. "Thomson, Mickle, Armstrong, 
Leyden, yourself, Irving (a poet in spirit), and I may add Sir Walter 
Scott were all Borderers." 

Jane Porter, the author of "Scottish Chiefs," has given us a 
picture of intellectual life near the Tweed just before Leyden and 
Scott began writing. "Born on the border lands of Scotland, my 
mother, in an early widowhood, took her children thither, then 
almost infants: . . . But in Scotland, it is not the 'pastors and 
masters' only who educate the people; there is a spirit of wholesome 
knowledge in the country, pervading all ranks, which passes from 
one to the other like the atmosphere they breathe; and I may truly 
say, that I was hardly six years of age when I first heard the names 
of William Wallace and Robert Bruce: — not from gentlemen and 
ladies, readers of history; but from the maids in the nursery, and 
the serving-man in the kitchen: the one had their songs of 'Wallace 

[ &5 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

wight!' to lull my baby sister to sleep; and the other his tales of 
'Bannockburn,' and 'Cambus-Kenneth,' to entertain my young 
brother." Not only the ballads but the later narrative poems of Scott 
were the voice of a people. 

The various memorials of Wordsworth's tours in Scotland reveal 
more sympathy with romantic medievalism than is common in his 
poetry. It has often been remarked that the best wording of that 
romantic spirit which our language preserves is in his four lines, by 
no means characteristic of his general attitude: 

Will no one tell me what she sings? 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
For old, unhappy, far-off things, 

And battles long ago. 

It has not been noticed that these lines were written in Scotland amid 
the atmosphere of poetical antiquarianism general among her people. 

The racial qualities of the Scotch group appear in the writings 
of fellow countrymen who were not personally in touch with them. 
The future novelist John Gait, at that time unacquainted with either 
Scott or his friends, declares that "long before the appearance of 
'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' I, then very young, in sending some 
trifle to the Scot's Magazine, mentioned my design of executing a 
series of historical ballads and dramas from Scottish history." 

A curious deflection of the general spirit is found in the dramas 
of Joanna Baillie, most of which were published between 1798 and 
1804, while "The Minstrelsy" and "The Lay" were rounding into 
shape. Miss Baillie at this time was not an acquaintance of Scott, 
though she later became his friend. Living the greater part of her 
life in London and doing all her literary work there, she remained 
firmly Scotch to the last, and never lost her northern accent. "Very 
much pleased we were with her," said Southey, "as good-natured, 
unaffected, and sensible a woman as I have ever seen." Like many 
a Scotch writer, she attempted to combine romantic incident and 
love of antiquity with a "cannie" regard for the realities of life; 
but in her case the result was unfortunate. Her plays are as medieval 
in date as the Waverley novels. "Constantine Paleologus" is in 

[ 86 ] 



THE SCOTCH GROUP 

ancient Constantinople, "Basil" in sixteenth-century Italy, "Eth- 
wald" among the Anglo-Saxons, '^Orra" in fourteenth-century Ger- 
many, ''The Dream" in fourteenth-century Switzerland, "The 
Martyr" in ancient Rome, "The Family Legend" in fifteenth- 
century Scotland. The stage directions include Gothic chambers, 
monasteries, and graveyards. In two plays flights occur through 
secret passageways ; and a number of seemingly supernatural events 
are explained away on natural grounds according to Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe's excellent recipe. Osterloo's guilt is hinted to a monk in a 
vision, but the monk before dreaming had received information on 
the subject from a deathbed confession. Ethwald, like Macbeth, is 
shown by the Mystic Sisters a vision of himself as a crowned yet 
unhappy king; but this had been arranged by a noble to check 
Ethwald's ambition. Orra in the haunted castle hears the ghostly 
sound of the wild hunt approaching at midnight; but it is a device 
of the robbers who live there to keep prying intruders away. "The 
Family Legend" handles a wild Scotch tale of crime and revenge, 
told again in Campbell's "Glenara." All this sounds romantic and 
medieval and Gothic enough; yet the general effect is exactly the 
opposite, moral, dignified, and dull, so different is atmosphere from 
incident. Miss Baillie's whole system is built up on logic instead of 
imagination, and is poetically dead. She was greatly overpraised by 
her fellow countrymen, especially Scott and John Wilson ; her recep- 
tion in the southern kingdom does not appear to have been so much 
beyond her deserts. Like Wordsworth she advocated simple diction, 
but like him used many unlifelike inversions in her poetry. 

Perhaps Miss Baillie would have written better on her native 
heather. Certainly her London home could not have been as inspiring 
to her as the city frequented by Leyden and Scott. "I don't wonder 
that any one residing in Edinburgh should write poetically," said 
Washington Irving; "I rambled about the bridges and on Calton 
height yesterday, in a perfect intoxication of the mind. I did not 
visit a single public building; but merely gazed and reveled on the 
romantic scenery around me." "It seemed as if the rock and castle 
assumed a new aspect every time I looked at them; and Arthur's 

[ 87 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

seat was perfect witchcraft." The landscape of Scotland had its 
relation to her poetry. 

Behind all these northern writers was the fervid national spirit, 
rendered more tense by the danger to their national ideals from 
social, industrial, and educational conquest. "Scotland and England 
sound like division, do what ye can," wrote Wordsworth to Scott 
in 1803. The author of "The Lay" felt keenly that 

This is my own, my native land. 

Leyden in his labors for "The Minstrelsy" "was equally interested 
by friendship for the editor, and by his own patriotic zeal for the 
honor of the Scottish borders." Burns only a few years before 
had hoped 

That I for poor auld Scotland's sake 
Some usefu' plan or book could make. 
Or sing a sang at least. 

At this time the Lake and Bristol authors were citizens of the world, 
critics of their nation. They were regarded, where they were known 
at all, as revolutionary versifiers rather than reformers in poetry. 
But the poetry of the northern writers was, and was felt to be, the 
national product of 

Caledonia, stern and wild. 
Meet nurse for a poetic child. 



[ 88 ] 



CHAPTER IV 

Poets and Authors of the Lakes 

The effect of landscape beauty on the susceptible minds of poets is 
never negligible, and was doubly strong around the year 1800. The 
great popularity of Cowper's "Task" with its graphic bits of rural 
scenery, the widely read treatises of William Gilpin on the pic- 
turesque in landscape, the influences of Burns and Rousseau and 
others, had made literary minds keenly observing and receptive. 
Through those enthusiastic days the poets of different regions might 
be expected, even more than usual, to take on, in Shelley's words, 
the color of "the very leaves under which they pass." The scenery 
of the Lake region, isolated, austere, and magnificent, was well cal- 
culated to inspire a poetry of little contemporary appeal but of deep 
and enduring power. It had never produced anything but the litera- 
ture of nature. Gray's "Journal in the Lakes," written the year 
before Wordsworth was born, breathes of another world than that 
of contemporary midland writings. A journey here called out from 
Mrs. Radcliffe the genuine touch that we miss in her novels. William 
Gilpin had published two volumes on its "picturesqueness" in 1789. 
Before 1800 this region had produced practically no poetry for gen- 
erations, Wordsworth having written nothing there but his immature 
"Evening Walk." After that date it became a nursery of poets and 
authors, and continued so to some extent throughout the nineteenth 
century. Even the bookish Southey, though he failed to realize his 
hopes later, cried out the day after his arrival: "Would that you 
could see these lakes and mountains ! how wonderful they are ! how 
aweful in their beauty! All the poet-part of me will be fed and 
fostered here." 

"The Lake School of Poetry" was a common expression among 

[ 89 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

critics and reviewers in Wordsworth's day; but in truth that region 
had no school of poetry. There was a scattered body of authors; 
but there was Hmited social intercourse, hardly any accepted literary 
dogma or method. Such likenesses as existed were due to a common 
isolation or atmosphere, or way of life, rather than the result of a 
school. There had been more mutual constructive criticism, more 
social organization, more cross currents of influence around Bristol 
than there were in the Lake region. 

After 1803 Southey with his own family and Coleridge's wife and 
children lived at Keswick, and Wordsworth after 1799 in or near 
Grasmere fourteen miles to the southeast. A few miles further down 
was the home of Charles Lloyd near Ambleside where he resided 
1 800-1 81 5. Coleridge, "the Wandering Jew of literature," as some- 
one contemptuously called him, came and went like a troubled spirit, 
and occasionally stayed with his family at Southey's, but more often 
with the Wordsworths. From 1800 to 1810 he spent about half his 
time fitfully in the Lake district; after that he lived in London or 
near the scenes of his faded hopes around Bristol. In 1807 two 
young college men, Thomas De Quincey and John Wilson (Christo- 
pher North), drawn by their enthusiastic hero-worship for Words- 
worth, settled in the region. De Quincey took the cottage at Gras- 
mere recently vacated by Wordsworth ; and although like his fellow 
opium-eater, Coleridge, he was sometimes a bird of passage, he lived 
mostly in Westmoreland until 1820, Wilson, from about 1807 to 
1 81 5, made his home at Elleray near the shores of Lake Windermere, 
six or seven miles from Wordsworth and twenty-one from Southey. 
By actual measure distances were less than they had been around 
Bristol; but roads were worse, winter snows were deeper, and the 
leading men were older, so that the authors as a whole formed less 
of a social unit. Nevertheless, two years after coming to Keswick, 
Southey speaks of himself as enjoying "intimate intercourse" with 
Wordsworth and Coleridge. There is a certain likeness in the general 
ahgnment to that of 1798 when Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their 
satellites were around Nether Stowey, and Southey at Bristol or 
Westbury over thirty miles away. 

The phrase "The Lake Poets" is only a trifle less misleading than 

[ 90 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

"The Lake School." There was but one great poet whose main and 
most characteristic work was done in that region; and that was 
Wordsworth. The amount of verse which Coleridge produced there, 
good or bad, is pitifully small; and of this the second half of "Chris- 
tabel," the "Ode on Dejection," and the "Hymn before Sunrise, in 
the Valley of Chamouni" are the only ones of much intrinsic value. 
Even these are none of them equal to the supreme work of earlier 
days. They are a saddening aftermath of the great visionary of 
Nether Stowey. The bulk of Southey's short poems were written 
before he came there; and several of the remainder were the drearily 
unlocalized, unindividualized work of the poet laureate. Of his five 
long epics, "Joan" and "Thalaba" were printed, and "Madoc" 
finished though not published by 1801. The fourth, "The Curse of 
Kehama," had been conceived in Lisbon that same year as "The 
Curse of Keradon," and some of it probably written before the 
author came to Keswick; its publication in 1810 was a belated 
harvest of a pre-Lake period. "Roderick" alone, of all these long 
narratives, was wholly the product of the Cumberland mountains. 

Southey after 1803 was not so much a Lake poet as a Lake man 
of letters. In 1799 he wrote to Cottle: "I have lately made up my 
mind to undertake one great historical work, the History of Portu- 
gal"; and thus at the age of twenty-six the historian began to crowd 
out the poet. Four years later he said: "The more I read, the more 
do I find the necessity of going to old authors for information, and 
the sad ignorance and dishonesty of our boasted historians. If God 
do but give me life, and health, and eyesight, I will show how history 
should be written, and exhibit such a specimen of indefatigable 
honesty as the world has never yet seen." By 1807 we have: "My 
own lays are probably at an end. That portion of my time which I 
can afford to employ in labouring for fame is given to historical 
pursuits; and poetry will not procure for me anything more sub- 
stantial. This motive alone would not, perhaps, wean me from an 
old calling, if I were not grown more attached to the business of 
historical research,^ and more disposed to instruct and admonish 
mankind than to amuse them." Seeing that the first idea of 

♦Italics ours, 

[ 91 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

"Roderick" had been conceived as early as 1805, his own lays were 
"at an end" after 1807, save for the finishing of those already in 
the works. At forty-one he acknowledged to a friend what he never 
acknowledged to the reviewers: "As a poet I know where I have 
fallen short. ... As an historian I shall come nearer my mark. 
For thorough research, indeed, and range of materials, I do not 
believe that the History of Portugal will ever have been surpassed." 
His judgment was right. To-day Southey as biographer, historian, 
and man of letters completely overshadows the poet. The negative 
merits of these prose works have always been acknowledged, and 
their positive virtues are beginning to be recognized; but any de- 
tailed discussion of them lies outside of our present field. 

More important for us is the fact that Southey, both as poet and 
scholar, introduced a minor new current into English verse, that of 
Spanish medievalism. The "Return to the Middle Ages," like the 
"Return to Nature," took on many forms and drew from many 
fields. In general these traditions began at first hand, the fruit of 
experience rather than mere fancy, to a much greater degree than 
has usually been supposed. Mallet, who started the long wave of 
Norse medievalism followed by Gray, had been Professor of Belles 
Lettres in the Royal University at Copenhagen. The German 
medieval tradition derived from German poets, Goethe's "Goetz," 
Schiller's "Robbers," and their imitators. The tradition of medieval 
France developed very late, for lack of antiquarian interest among 
French literati to kindle the English. The romantic interest in the 
medieval Orient was ignited from the Oriental travels of Byron. It 
was not until he and Shelley and Landor had explored Italy that 
English authors wrote much of the Italian Middle Ages. Southey 
made a short trip to Spain and Portugal in 1796, and a much longer 
journey at the turn of the century, before the end of which he was 
"almost as well acquainted with Portuguese literature, as with that 
of my own country." He was the first man who made the past of the 
Iberian peninsula an important factor in modern English poetry. 
Several of his short poems, of which "Queen Orraca" (1803) is the 
best, are straggling evidences of his interest; a much greater is the 
last, and perhaps the best, of his epics, the story of that ill-fated 

[ 92 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

king whose lust brought the Moors into Spain, This poem came after 
Wellington's campaign had turned all eyes toward the Peninsula; 
and by one of those spontaneous reactions which occur simulta- 
neously in different minds, three poets, all in correspondence, yet all 
apparently starting independently, were at work on this same theme 
at the same time, Southey, Walter Scott, and W. S. Landor. 

Southey's prose, including translations and adaptations, probably 
did more to form the Spanish current than his poems. His "Letters 
from Spain and Portugal," published 1797, are travel diaries of his 
first journey. His "Chronicle of the Cid" (1808) is a mosaic of 
different Spanish sources rather than a translation, but is exceed- 
ingly readable and took well with the public. The following t3rpical 
passage from it makes one think of "Ivanhoe": "Each bent down 
with his face to the saddle-bow, and gave his horse the spur. And 
they met all six with such a shock, that they who looked on expected 
to see them all fall dead. Pero Bermudez and Ferrando Gonzalez 
encountered, and the shield of Pero Bermudez was pierced, but the 
spear passed through on one side, and hurt him not, and brake in 
two places; and he sat firm in his seat. One blow he received, but 
he gave another; he drove his lance through Ferrando's shield, at 
his breast, so that nothing availed him. Ferrando's breastplate was 
threefold; two plates the spear went clean through, and drove the 
third in before it, with the velmez and the shirt, into the breast, 
near his heart; . , , and the girth and the poitral of his horse burst, 
and he and the saddle went together over the horse's heels, and the 
spear in him, and all thought him dead." 

Southey also translated the famous old "Amadis of Gaul," with 
its giants and wizards and parallelisms to the Arthurian cycle; and 
the Portuguese "Palmerin of England." "Oh, sweet and romantic 
Spain," cried Campbell in 1808; and after 1808 many other writers 
followed Southey in this picturesque new field. There were Scott's 
"Vision of Don Roderick," Landor's "Count Julian," Byron's first 
canto of "Childe Harold" and "Very Mournful Ballad of Alhama"; 
the Spanish poems of Mrs. Hemans; and the "Ancient Spanish 
Ballads" of Lockhart; to say nothing of those minor fry who flock 
around a good literary opening like vultures around a carcass. 

[93 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

As an antiquarian and scholar Southey felt an affinity for Scott 
which was absolutely lacking in Wordsworth. We have all heard 
what the latter wrote to Scott about "Marmion": "I think your end 
has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you 
to propose to yourself, you will be aware." But Southey said, "I am 
not willing to admit that some of the situations in the Lay and 
Marmion can be outdone"; and earlier, before they had met, in 
connection with "Amadis" wrote of Scott, "he is a man whose taste 
accords with mine." 

Southey at the age of thirty-nine speaks of "a sort of autumnal 
or evening tone of mind, coming upon me a little earlier than it does 
upon most men"; and something of that "evening tone" is found 
in his later poems, both long and short. The humor so obvious 
during his Bristol period is almost entirely gone; so is the influence 
of Gothic melodrama. In politics the revolutionary note is changed 
to its opposite, but in poetry it is dropped altogether. "I am no 
more ashamed of having been a republican," he told Crabb Robin- 
son, "than I am of having been a child." 

Another effect of his lonely life at Keswick, where "from Novem- 
ber till June not a soul do we see, — except, perhaps, Wordsworth, 
once or twice during the time," was to make him fall back more and 
more upon books as his only companions. His library at his death 
comprised some 14,000 volumes, many of them rare and costly. 
Perhaps this influence was not good for a man always too much of a 
bookworm; yet one of the noblest poems he ever wrote, 

"My days among the dead are past," 

grew out of it; and that in turn is little more than a versification of 
a letter to Coleridge: "Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize 
in the lottery! What is that to the opening a box of books! The joy 
upon lifting up the cover, must be something like what we shall feel 
when Peter the Porter opens the door upstairs, and says. Please to 
walk in, sir. ... It will be a great delight to me in the next world, 
to take a fly and visit these old worthies, who are my only society 
here, and to tell them, what excellent company I found them here 
at the Lakes of Cumberland, two centuries after they had been dead 

[ 94 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

and turned to dust. In plain truth, I exist more among the dead than 
the living, and think more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about 
them." Any experience felt as deeply as that may become poetry in 
its kind, may introduce us to that 

One great society alone on earth: 

The noble Living and the noble Dead. 

We cannot believe Southey so much more unwise than our modern 
realists because he filled his brain with the distilled quintessence of 
a dead sage's mind rather than with the unassorted garbage of a 
living prostitute's. 

When we consider the vast arc of thought and knowledge sub- 
tended by Southey's mind, the purity and pliability of his style, we 
cannot help asking. Why does this man after all remain only a 
second-rate prose writer and a third-rate poet? One reason must 
have been the economic pressure under which he lived. Wordsworth 
hardly earned a dollar during his life. Southey from early manhood 
had the total support for his own family as well as Lovell's widow, 
and partial support for that of Coleridge, in the words of Words- 
worth, "a little world dependent upon his industry." "Drudge, 
drudge, drudge," he groans. "Do you know Quarles's emblem of the 
soul that tries to fly, but is chained by the leg to earth?" Want and 
suffering may produce great poetry; merciless routine kills it. But 
back of that there were fundamental weaknesses in his own nature, 
one of which was his fatal overproductivity. "The more I write," he 
says, "the more I have to write. I have a Helicon kind of dropsy 
upon me, and crescit indulgens sibi." Could all his miscellaneous 
articles be collected, he would, says his son, "unquestionably be 
found to have been one of the most voluminous writers of any age 
or of any country." Where one brain has so many children, they 
are all apt to be anemic. At bottom, above all, he was probably a 
man of talent trying to play the role of genius. Yet, when we con- 
sider the far-reaching effect of his writings and research, who can 
question the fact that our literature is richer because he lived? 

The story of Coleridge during this period is the story of a soul's 
tragedy, of "Hesperus that led the starry host" sinking in an opium 

[ 95 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

night. De Quincey, who was on the ground and saw, although he can- 
not always be trusted, tells us: "The fine saying of Addison is famil- 
iar to most readers, — that Babylon in ruins is not so affecting a spec- 
tacle, or so solemn, as a human mind overthrown by lunacy. How 
much more awful, then, when a mind so regal as that of Coleridge is 
overthrown, or threatened with overthrow, not by a visitation of 
Providence, but by the treachery of its own will, and the conspiracy, 
as it were, of himself against himself!" "But, apparently, he was 
not happy; opium, was it, or what was it, that poisoned all natural 
pleasure at its sources? He burrowed continually deeper into 
scholastic subtleties and metaphysical abstractions ... At two or 
four o'clock in the afternoon he would make his first appearance. 
Through the silence of the night, when all other lights had dis- 
appeared, in the quiet cottages of Grasmere, his lamp might be seen 
invariably by the belated traveler, as he descended the long steep 
from Dunmailraise; and at seven or eight o'clock in the morning, 
when man was going forth to his labor, this insulated son of reverie 
was retiring to bed." Coleridge was only thirty-seven when Words- 
worth wrote his epitaph as a creative intellect: "I give it to you as 
my deliberate opinion, formed upon proofs which have been 
strengthening for years, that he neither will nor can execute any- 
thing of important benefit either to himself, his family, or mankind. 
Neither his talents nor his genius — mighty as they are — nor his vast 
information will avail him anything. They are all frustrated by a 
derangement in his intellectual and moral constitution." A "poet of 
the Lakes" indeed! "Even the finest spring day does not tempt him 
to seek the fresh air," Dorothy tells us; "and this beautiful valley 
seems a blank to him." It was probably a great mistake that a man 
so connatally unhealthy ever took up his residence in the damp Lake 
region. "We would not on any account that he should fix himself in 
this rainy part of England," wrote Wordsworth prophetically in 
1804. During a few months he edited his abortive periodical The 
Friend, the most unpunctual magazine that ever offended sub- 
scribers; but for the most part he haunted that literary arena like 
a ghost, deedless, heedless, and unheeded. For two years or so, it is 

[ 96] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

true, the first of his Cumberland residence, he was thrilled occa- 
sionally by the grandeur of the environing landscape. He heard how 

Ancient Skiddaw, stern and proud, 

In sullen majesty replying, 

Thus spake from out his helm of cloud. 

He began the second part of "Christabel" with a glance over 

Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 
And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent. 

In his "Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Valley of Chamouni," the de- 
scription of Mont Blanc, which he had never seen, may have owed 
something to the Cumberland mountains around him. Certainly it 
has many likenesses to Wordsworth's earlier description of a 
neighboring height: 

This Peak, so high. 
Above us, and so distant in its height. 
Is visible; and often seems to send 
Its own deep quiet to restore our hearts. 
The meteors make of it a favorite haunt: 
The star of Jove, so beautiful and large 
In the mid heavens, is never half so fair 
As when he shines above it. 

Also Coleridge may have drawn his Alpine 

pine-groves with your soft and soul-like sounds 

from the Westmoreland scene which made Wordsworth write 

The fir-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound. 

All this, however, was a mere passing ripple. In 1802 he wrote to 
Southey: "All my poetic genius ... is gone, and I have been fool 
enough to suffer deeply in my mind, regretting the loss." In that 
same year he composed the last of his great poems, the "Ode on 
Dejection," no product of landscape beauty but the wail of the 
opium-eater's despair. 

[ 97 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, 
In word, or sigh, or tear. 

But now afflictions bow me down to earth; 
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth, 

But oh! each visitation 
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 
My shaping spirit of Imagination. 

Fuit Troia; juit poeta. 

The minor authors of the Lake region may be dismissed briefly. 
On Charles Lloyd much of the time there rested a mental cloud 
fully as terrible in its different way, as that overshadowing Cole- 
ridge. The other Lakers visited him as friends; but seem to have 
had little in common with him in literary taste or activities. His 
preferences were developing along French and neo-classic lines with 
which Wordsworth and Southey were not in sympathy. Hartley 
Coleridge remembered "dear Charles Lloyd reading Pope's 'Trans- 
lation of Statius' in the little drawing room at Old Brathay. . . . 
Lloyd appreciated Pope as rightly as any man I ever knew, which 
I ascribe partly to his intelligent enjoyment of French writers." 
It was Southey who said of French that "poetry of the higher order 
is as impossible in that language as it is in Chinese." Lloyd like 
Cowper believed himself the object of divine wrath, and perhaps 
like Cowper turned to translation as a mental diversion. At any 
rate his only published work during this period was a three-volume 
translation of Alfieri's plays in 1815; and he also translated, but 
never printed, about half of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." He produced 
no original poetry in the Lake region; and his version of Alfieri, a 
pronounced neo-classic dramatist, was far enough from belonging 
to the same school as "The Excursion." In the year in which it 
appeared Wordsworth declared: "It is unaccountable to me how 
men could ever proceed, as Racine (and Alfieri I believe) used to 
do, first writing their plays in prose, and afterwards turning them 
into verse. It may answer with so slavish a language and so enslaved 

[ 98 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

a taste as the French have." Curiously enough, all the poetical 
reminiscences of Lloyd's Westmoreland life turn up years later in 
his "Desultory Thoughts in London." To that volume is prefixed 
a suggestive quotation from Rousseau: "Si je veux peindre le prin- 
temps, il faut que je sois en hyver; si je veux decrire un beau pay- 
sage, il faut que je sois dans les murs"; and "in this city's vast 
receptacle," amid "Its countless eyes, its multitudinous will," the 
poet, partially recovered in mental health, wrote some four hundred 
lines on the beauty of his Westmoreland home and the neighboring 
lakes. 

I had a cottage in a Paradise, 
he tells us. 

The Pyracanthus with its glossy green. 

And scarlet berries; and, as yet unsung, 
The jasmine white and yellow, deck'd this scene; 

And o'er our little porch tenacious clung. 
And round each window, (while beneath them seen 

Moss roses peeped, like birds, in nests, when young. 
From beds of leaves,) with red and purple flower 
From thread-like stem, the pensile virgin's bower. . . . 

Dreams afterwards I dream'd, and this the place 

To which their consummation evermore 
I did refer. There is a mountain grace, 

A grace peculiar, which I ne'er before. 
Or since, beheld, in its romantic face: 

In cove of mighty hills, amid the roar 
Of unseen cataracts, whose voice you hear. 
It stands! — meet haunt for visionary fear! 

Reverent and enthusiastic allusions to Wordsworth occur several 
times in this poem. 

De Quincey, though a Lake resident for over a decade, was not 
a Lake author. All his literary work was done subsequently in 
London and Edinburgh. Many years later, however, through his 
articles published in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, he became the 

[99] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

historian of the hterary life quorum pars magna juit. He had come 
to Westmoreland as an adorer of Wordsworth, with 

all the sweet and sudden passion of youth 
Toward greatness in its elder. 

After a few years his attitude became more critical and qualified; 
partly because he found his idol in some ways very human, still 
more because his own use of narcotics was gradually deadening in 
him the generous power to appreciate nobleness. His literary 
reminiscences are a medley of keen analysis, noble prose, wanton 
inaccuracy, and petty or spiteful gossip. In spite of their defects, 
due mainly, it is probable, to the depraving laudanum cup, they 
form a highly readable addition to the literature of the Lakes. 

John Wilson (later the Christopher North of magazine fame) 
was a full-blooded young Scotchman with a hero-worship that his 
countrjmian Carlyle would have admired. Before going to Oxford 
he had read Wordsworth's poems with delight and written to tell 
the author so. "He had been more than a year in this neighborhood," 
writes Dorothy, "before he could resolve to call upon my brother — 
this from modesty, and a fear of intruding upon him — but since 
that time we have had frequent intercourse with him, and are all 
most affectionately attached to him. He has the utmost reverence 
for my brother, and has no delight superior to that of conversing 
with him; and he has often said that he is indebted to him for pre- 
serving the best part of his nature." Wilson was at this time rich 
in money, brains, and physical vigor, and consequently rather lazy 
for lack of any spur. He published two mediocre poems as a result 
of leisure among the Lakes, "The Isle of Palms" in the middle of 
his residence there, and "The City of the Plague" at its close. The 
first is a pleasant but rather lax narrative poem, in which two lovers 
are wrecked on a desert island and so forced unwillingly into Rous- 
seau's life of primeval nature, to their great advantage. The influence 
of the earlier and more obvious elements in Wordsworth is plain. 
The second is a rambling blank verse drama describing the Great 
Plague in London with horrors that are none the less "Gothic" 

[ 100 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

because they very probably occurred, — "out- Germanizing the Ger- 
mans," as Southey put it. 

Oh! ours were dreadful orgies! — At still midnight 
We sallied out, in mimic grave-clothes clad, 
Aping the dead, and in some churchyard danced 
A dance that ofttimes had a mortal close. . . . 
Or in a hearse we sat, which one did drive 
In masquerade habiliments of death. 

The play would hardly be considered belonging to the same school 
as either "Roderick" or "Michael." One detail, however, connects 
it with the Lake literature, when the hero amid his own danger 
rejoices in believing that his betrothed is safe at her home far away 
among the Westmoreland lakes. 

William Hazlitt, "a person for whom I never had any love," says 
Wordsworth, "but with whom I had for a short time a good deal of 
intimacy," made a short tour in the Lakes, painted some pictures 
there, and is said by De Quincey to have proposed to Dorothy 
Wordsworth. He was, far more truly than Coleridge, "the Wander- 
ing Jew of literature," his great ability connecting him with many 
literary camps, and his repellant personality making him welcome 
in none. Neither he nor Lamb was a Lake author, though Lamb also 
visited his old friends. 

As we have said before, the one great "Lake poet" was Words- 
worth. For him alone this was the region of his birth, of his early 
training, of those transcendent visions that "The Prelude" records. 
Southey in 1803 became a Lake poet instead of a Welsh one, 
because a prospective landlord in Wales proved obdurate about 
repairing the kitchen; Wordsworth came here like a homing bird, 
not through chance but through mental affinity. Southey admired 
him, Coleridge inspired him, Wilson, and for a time De Quincey, 
knelt before him as their high priest of literature; but he and his 
poetry stand essentially alone. In 181 2, when his best work was 
done, he mentioned "an utter inability on my part to associate with 
any class or body of literary men, and thus subject myself to the 
necessity of sacrificing my own judgment and of lending even 
indirectly countenance or support to principles, — either of taste, 

[ loi ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

politics, morals or religion,— which I disapprove." His interest in 
contemporary moral and political problems was keen; but his letters 
are full of evidence that he deliberately insulated himself from the 
more popular currents of contemporary literature. In 1814 he 
warned Gillies against Byron as "a bad writer." "I know little of 
Blackwood's Magazine, and wish to know less," he wrote, though 
Blackwood's favored his poetry. As for the hostile Edinburgh 
Review, Dorothy writes that her brother "will not suffer it to come 
into his house, as you know; but we females have." "Except now 
and then, when Southey accommodates me, I see no new books 
whatever." "On new books I have not spent five shillings for the 
last five years." "The only modern books that I read are those of 
travels, or such as relate to matters of fact, — and the only modern 
books that I care for." 

He has been called a "romantic poet" and a part of "the romantic 
movement." He was inevitably touched occasionally by the spirit 
of his age; but he neither belonged to it nor moved with it. "It is 
entirely impossible that any man can understand Milton, and fail 
to perceive that Wordsworth is a poet of the same class and of equal 
powers." So wrote Southey, the year after "The Excursion"; and 
whatever we may think of the "equal powers" we shall find room 
for thought in the classification. Southey was not the only contem- 
porary to notice it. Barry Cornwall declared that "Wordsworth's 
prototype was Milton." The sonnets of Wordsworth in their ethical 
vigor are Miltonic, not at all in the plaintive vein of Bowles, whose 
influence had probably evaporated during the eight years before the 
first of them was written. "In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, 
one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the Sonnets of Milton. 
I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly 
struck on that occasion with the dignified simplicity and majestic 
harmony that runs through most of them. ... I took fire, if I 
may be allowed to say so, and produced three Sonnets the same 
afternoon, the first I ever wrote except an irregular one at school." 
This is the author's declaration; and he who doubts it may read 
"Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne," or "Two voices are 
there; one is of the sea." De Quincey, not far from the time when 

[ 102 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

these verses were written, found a marked likeness between Words- 
worth's face and a portrait of Milton. 

In metre, also, despite the fact that Milton is remarkably sus- 
tained and Wordsworth remarkably uneven, there is more likeness 
than has usually been recognized. Wordsworth wrote more blank 
verse, and, after the chaff is eliminated, more good blank verse, 
than any other poet of the romantic generation. Ward's "English 
Poets" quoted more lines from him in this metre than from Shelley, 
and three times as many as from any other poet of the age. He had 
not Milton's ear and technique; but he had at times a remarkable 
likeness in thought and inspiration. 

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
A wilderness of building, sinking far 
And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth. 
Far sinking into splendor — without end! 
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold. 
With alabaster domes, and silver spires, 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright. 
In avenues disposed ; there, towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars — illumination of all gems! 

Wordsworth had Milton's interest in great political crises, and the 
same sense of ethical responsibility, as shown in his "Ode to Duty." 
He sums up the teaching of his "White Doe of Rylstone" in Milton's 
language: "How insignificant a thing, for example, does personal 
prowess appear compared with the fortitude of patience and heroic 
martyrdom,"'^ His indifference toward Scott's feudal romances is 
not unlike that of the epic poet who felt no eagerness to describe 

tilting furniture, emblazoned shields. 
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds. 
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights 
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast 
Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals. 



♦Italics ours. 



[ 103 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

We are not contending that the Wordsworthian poems are as a 
whole closely like those of Milton. But we do believe that there was 
much similarity in the nature and ideals of the men, and that the 
writings of Wordsworth are as much like those of his great prede- 
cessor as could be reasonably expected in an age and environment 
so different. 

Wordsworth is always called ''the poet of nature"; but a Miltonic 
and ethical element often underlay his feeling for landscape beauty. 
"All just and solid pleasure in natural objects/' he believed, "rests 
upon two pillars, God and Man." He loved nature as a lyric poet 
does language, partly for its own beauty, partly as a medium of 
expression, the language of God to men. In this respect he is far 
more akin to the Hebrew psalmist and to Milton than he is to our 
modern landscape poets, those heapers-up of beautiful details, who, 
in Wordsworth's judgment as well as Blake's, 

are led to believe a lie 
When we see with, not through, the eye. 

Many of his poems after 1800 are the joint children of Milton 
and Grasmere, showing the features sometimes of one parent, some- 
times of the other, at times a blend of both. The Lake region was 
to him not merely a home but a sacred place, the only ground where 
he felt that his poetry could reach its full harvest. Here, walled 
round with seclusion and beauty, guarded from the pettiness and 
turmoil of life, he believed that he could realize a vision not like 
what Milton saw but like what Milton would have beheld in the 
nineteenth century. This hope is the theme of his fragmentary 
"Recluse," which is the key to his future plans, as "The Prelude" 
is the key to his past development. The one book of it written is 
entitled "Home at Grasmere." He tells how as a boy he returned 
here: 

and sighing said, 
"What happy fortune were it here to livel" 

And now 'tis mine, perchance for life, dear Vale, 
Beloved Grasmere 

[ 104 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

nowhere else is found, 
Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found 
The one sensation that is here ; 'tis here, 
Here as it found its way into my heart 
In childhood, here as it abides by day. 
By night, here only; or in chosen minds 
That take it with them hence, where'er they go. 

'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense 
Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, 
A blended holiness of earth and sky. 
Something that makes this individual spot. 
This small abiding-place of many men, 
A termination, and a last retreat, 
A center, come from wheresoe'er you will, 
A whole without dependence or defect, 
Made for itself, and happy in itself, 
Perfect contentment. Unity entire. 

And as these lofty barriers break the force 
Of winds, — this deep Vale, as it doth in part 
Conceal us from the storm, so here abides 
A power and a protection for the mind. 

Here, not as a world-weary neurotic or an effeminate beauty lover, 
but as a virile and epic poet, he gives up the martial themes which 
he apparently had cherished, to write on themes which he recognizes 
as utterly unlike "Paradise Lost," but which he considers equally 
Miltonic. 

Then farewell to the Warrior's Schemes, farewell 
The forwardness of soul which looks that way 
Upon a less incitement than the Cause 
Of Liberty endangered, and farewell 
That other hope, long mine, the hope to fill 
The heroic trumpet with the Muse's breath! 
Yet in this peaceful Vale we will not spend 
Unheard-of days, though loving peaceful thought, 
A voice shall speak, and what will be the theme? 

[ los ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Urania, I shall need 
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such 
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven 1 
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink 
Deep— and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds 
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. 
All strength, — all terror, single or in bands, 
That ever was put forth in personal form — 
Jehovah — with his thunder, and the choir 
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones — 
I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not 
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out 
By help of dreams — can breed such fear and awe 
As fall upon us often when we look 
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man — 
My haunt, and the main region of my song. 

Paradise, and groves 
Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old 
Sought in the Atlantic Main — why should they be 
A history only of departed things. 
Or a mere fiction of what never was? 
For the discerning intellect of Man, 
When wedded to this goodly universe 
In love and holy passion, shall find these 
A simple produce of the common day. 

It was the tragedy of Wordsworth's career that the physical element 
in poetical inspiration, the instinctive lyric stirring of the bird in 
its mating time, burned out in him early, while in Milton it endured 
late. This makes it harder to feel in the poems the likeness which 
there unquestionably was in the poets. Wordsworth also was experi- 
menting in a new field, while Milton was following great models 
in an old one; and experiment is more favorable to knowledge than 
to art. Yet it is unquestionable that in "The Excursion" and the 
unfinished ''Recluse" Wordsworth was trying to write a modern 
"Paradise Regained," in which Nature was the Saviour, a morbid 

[ io6 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

attitude toward life was the defeated fiend, and Grasmere was 
Holy Land. 

Such were the high hopes with which Wordsworth came to the 
Lakes. All previous experiences, including the passing "experiment" 
of the Stowey poems, were mere preliminary incidents in his eyes. 
Did he realize his dream? Unquestionably he wrote much great 
poetry there, the bulk of that by which he will endure. Unquestion- 
ably most of this poetry took on the color of his environment. Yet 
nearly all which was best was written in the first seven years, and 
after that for four decades, in the midst of the scenes which he had 
believed so inspiring, he gradually withered as poet and man. Such 
a life of retirement is admirably calculated to ripen thought already 
sown, but not to sow new seed, which fall thickest in the concourses 
of men. He reaped a plentiful first harvest, and after that for half 
a lifetime gleaned a barren field. During a few years, however, the 
greatest poet of his age found his greatest inspiration in the peaks 
and lakes and flowers around his home. After the Stowey "ballads" 
and even the "Lucy" lyrics of his German visit, the poems of his 
first year at Grasmere surround one at once with a more localized 
northern atmosphere. Two of them are among his best, "The 
Brothers" and "Michael." In the first a former Lake resident, 
coming back like the poet himself, once more 

Saw mountains; saw the forms of sheep that grazed 
On verdant hills — with dwellings among trees. 
And shepherds clad in the same country gray 
Which he himself had worn. 

Here we are no more among the peasants of Somerset, the Simon 
Lees thankful for any aid, the "man fullgrown" sobbing as he sells 
his last lamb when the parish refuses to help him. Instead here in 
the north 

Year after year the old man still kept up 
A cheerful mind, — and buffeted with bond. 
Interest, and mortgages; at last he sank, 
And went into his grave before his time. 
[ 107 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

These are the indomitable poor whom Wordsworth referred to in a 
letter as "now almost confined to the north of England." 

Wordsworth as Wordsworth had many sides and sounded many 
keys. As the poet of Grasmere he is less complex. In the verse com- 
posed there the purely lyric note appears more rarely than in the 
products of Stowey, of Germany, and of the Highland tours. The 
poems tinged with medievalism between 1800 and 1814 are mostly 
evoked by other localities. "Hart-Leap Well," though written at 
Grasmere, was inspired by a Yorkshire scene passed in a recent 
trip. A Scotch tour called out the address to the ruins of Kilchurn 

castle, 

The pride, the fury uncontrollable, 

Lost on the aerial heights of the Crusades. 

"The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle" was composed at 
Coleorton in Leicestershire. The first half of "The White Doe," the 
part most tinged with medieval color, was written at Stockton-upon- 
Tees in Durhamshire, the birthplace of the antiquary Ritson. We 
are by no means sure that the quiet home encouraged the best 
political verse. His most noble sonnets on national questions were 
mainly written during or just after the trip to London in 1802 and 
the Scotch tour of 1803. Thoughts of a "Briton on the Subjugation 
of Switzerland" was composed at Coleorton. On the contrary, by 
Grasmere lake the poet says: 

Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds 
Ravage the world, tranquility is here. 

The effect of the Westmoreland environment shows itself often 
in a vein of poetical but homely realism like that of Cowper and 
Burns, as in the poems on the daisy and the celandine. This is a 
study of the beautiful in the commonplace, and an almost aggressive 
reaction at times against the age's love of remote countries and 
centuries. At times the stern contour of the landscape and high spirit 
of the people, produce a very different vein, bare and dignified as 
the mountain tops themselves. This quality becomes epic in 
"Michael," and in "The Affliction of Margaret" shows how dignified 
realism can replace the peculiar spell of the supernatural. 

[ 108 ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

I look for ghosts; but none will force 
Their way to me: 'tis falsely said 
That there was ever intercourse 
Between the living and the dead. . . . 
My apprehensions come in crowds; 
I dread the rustling of the grass; 
The very shadows of the clouds 
Have power to shake me as they pass. 

These words might be a photograph of life, and yet suggest the 
unseen better than all the unearthly wonders of "Kehama." Or 
again the retired life of "The Recluse" encourages an old tendency 
toward mystic philosophy, which appears in only a few poems, but 
those among the author's best, 

High instincts before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised, 

and visionary moods in which an old leech-gatherer 

did seem 
Like one whom I had met with in a dream. 

The pentameter line, in blank verse, sonnet, couplet, or stanza, is 
used more consistently for the Grasmere poems than for those 
written in Scotland, Somerset, Germany, or anywhere else outside 
of the Lakes. This fact is probably an index of a more grave and 
meditative mood under Helvellyn and Scafell, more stagnant when 
uninspired, more Hebraic under inspiration, the mood which De 
Quincey found in the poet's eyes following a tramp among the hills. 
"After a long day's toil in walking, I have seen them assume an 
appearance the most solemn and spiritual that it is possible for the 
human eye to wear. ... It is a light that seems to come from 
depths below all depths." "One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah 
to have had such eyes," said Leigh Hunt. 

Of the two most lengthy poems composed among the Lakes, "The 
Prelude" inevitably contains much which might have been written 
anywhere; but that "The Excursion" was the direct child of its 
environment was long ago pointed out by Lamb. "The dialogue 

[ 109 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

throughout is carried on in the very heart of the most romantic 
scenery which the poet's native hills could supply; and which, by 
the perpetual references made to it either in the way of illustration 
or for variety and pleasurable description's sake, is brought before 
us as we read. We breathe in the fresh air, as we do while reading 
Walton's Complete Angler; only the country about us is as much 
bolder than Walton's, as the thoughts and speculations, which form 
the matter of the poem, exceed the trifling pastime and low-pitched 
conversation of his humble fishermen." "It is," according to Pro- 
fessor Harper, "pre-eminently the poem of the Lake country, and 
in no other work of Wordsworth or anyone else has the life of 
a particular 'nook of English ground' been portrayed with more 
distinctness and poetic truth. There are dozens of passages the full 
force of which can be felt only by one who has lived in the vales 
and known some of their inhabitants of the old stock." One of the 
defects in "The Excursion" is that it is too full of local flavor, so 
that the fragments written long before south of Bristol do not har- 
monize with those composed north of Windermere. Also, as Vergil's 
voice is said to have made commonplace poetry appear noble, so 
the grandeur of W^ordsworth's environment made trifling matters 
appear epic, with disastrous results on the poem, for when it is 
read apart from that extrinsic magic of environment it often proves 
flat as a libretto without the music. 

It was Wordsworth's ambition to be a pastoral and meditative 
Milton. The disjecta membra of his bold plan are scattered through 
his works, now sublime, now jarring, now gravely unreadable. There 
was a hopeless contradiction in the basic plan; for epic poetry im- 
plies incident, and he was trying to write an epic poem glorifying 
eventless lives. Was there also a mistake in the form of life that he 
chose for himself, a life so one-sided, so isolated compared with 
that of Scott or Goethe, men who improved during the later years 
when he was barren? Probably not, for the eight or nine years of his 
great period have left more enduring work than the thirty of Scott. 
Every plant grows best according to the laws of its own being. Yet 
a life for many years amid much beautiful scenery but without 
daily attrition against new minds, a life, moreover, without the calm 

[ no ] 



POETS AND AUTHORS OF THE LAKES 

staying power of a regular calling, leaves little middle ground 
between inspiration and stagnation. When one went the other came. 
The great poet, says Professor Harper, reached his fortieth year 
and passed it, "with no quickening of soul, no renewal of youth, 
no broadening of sympathies, no acquisition of fresh intellectual 
interests." At forty-two he told a friend that he had no objection 
to leaving the Lake region, which twelve years earlier he had sought 
as poetry's hallowed ground. He himself believed his premature 
decline due to anxiety about his country's fate; Professor Harper 
ascribes it to the passionate intensity of his nature; yet Dante under 
both of these burdens wrote the world's grandest poem in middle 
age. All that is most noble and genuine in Wordsworth's poetry 
takes on new beauty when associated with the landscapes which 
evoked it, without which it might never have been; yet some may 
have passing regrets too as they gaze on the beautiful region where 
the greatest poet of his time blossomed — and withered. 



[ III ] 



CHAPTER V 

The Popular Supremacy of Scott, 1805-1812 

In 1804 the poet Bowles wrote of the period as "a time so unfavor- 
able to long poems." The following January, Scott's "Lay of the 
Last Minstrel" was published; and over 27,000 copies of it were 
printed in the next seven years, nearly 44,000 copies before 1830. 
Nor was it merely a best seller and eyed askance by the discerning, 
like Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy"; it was on the table of the poetical 
and scholarly everywhere. 

Considered from within, as a history of the poet's mind and daily 
life, the development of Scott's genius was peculiarly logical and 
unbroken; from folk ballad to original ballad, from this to ballad 
narrative. Considered from without, however, from the viewpoint 
of the reading public, there was a marked difference between Scott 
before 1805 and after that date. The early German publications had 
been so completely forgotten that Monk Lewis reprinted them sup- 
posing his edition the first. "The Minstrelsy" had sold well among 
scholars and Scotchmen, moderately elsewhere. "The work did not 
perhaps attract much notice beyond the more cultivated students 
of literature," says Lockhart, "until the Editor's own genius blazed 
out in full splendor in the Lay." Even the moderate amount of suc- 
cess which the collection enjoyed did not necessarily argue popu- 
larity for original verse by the compiler. Southey's "Amadis" and 
other Spanish adaptations apparently had about the same success 
as "The Minstrelsy"; but his own narrative poems were read by 
scores where the "Lay" was read by thousands. In 1804 Scott for 
the general reader was hardly a name; in 1805 he was a blazing 
meteor on the literary horizon. Rogers and Campbell had each won 
a single great popular triumph, but had been unable to follow it up. 

[ 112 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

Scott, like Napoleon, passed from one popular victory to another. 
"Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake" found an even better 
reception than the "Lay," and though "Rokeby" (1813) deservedly 
got more unfavorable criticism, there was no marked falling off in 
the sales. By this time, however, Byron was in the field; and Scott's 
poetical vein was worked out. His "Lord of the Isles" (181 5) found 
fewer readers; and the popular reign of Scott in poetry was over. 

While it lasted it was a reign indeed. People did not merely 
peruse his work, they took fire from it. "You know," Mrs. Words- 
worth told her husband in 18 13, "that Mr. Scott's verses are the 
delight of the times, and that thousands can repeat scores of pages." 
His description of the battle of Beal' an Duine encouraged the 
soldiers in the trenches of Torres Vedras. His noble character and 
affable address made him friends in all ranks. So great and so unfail- 
ing was his success that we are accustomed to think of this decade 
as an age of poetry readers, in marked contrast to the one just gone. 
This, however, was not the case, and the general literary market was 
very much like that of 1910 if we may trust Southey. In 1808, 
the year of "Marmion," he wrote to Ebenezer Elliott: "Poetry is 
the worst article in the market; — out of fifty volumes which may 
be published in the course of a year, not five pay the expense of 
publication: and this is a piece of knowledge which authors in 
general purchase dearly, for in most cases these volumes are printed 
at their risk," With all due allowance for Southey's wish to dis- 
courage an immature poet, we must remember that he was a pro- 
fessional reviewer, and knew whereof he spoke. In 1807 Constable 
paid a thousand guineas for "Marmion" without having seen a 
line of it; and Murray, to whom he had conceded part of the prize, 
wrote to him: "We both view it as honorable, profitable, and 
glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter 
Scott." The next year, as Dorothy Wordsworth tells us, Longman, 
who had vainly tried to get "Marmion," grudgingly consented to 
publish "The White Doe of Rylstone." "Longman has consented, 
in spite of the odium under which my brother labors as a poet, to 
give him one hundred guineas per thousand copies, according to 

[ 113 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the demand."* The poem remained unprinted and under revision for 
seven years. None of Jane Austen's novels found a publisher before 
1811, although three of the best of them were written earlier than 
"The Minstrelsy." During Scott's reign up to 181 2 the only other 
poets to gain a firm hold on the public were Moore, Campbell, and 
Crabbe. His triumph was an index less of the age than of the 
author; and whatever we may think of his permanent rank we must 
grant him the power of contemporary appeal. 

Personally we believe that his success was deserved. He may 
occasionally have truckled to the public with a little manufactured 
sentimentalism or magic; but in the main the qualities which made 
him known are the virtues by which he endures. He was popular 
partly because he kept his finger on the pulse of his audience; but 
he did this, not through sordid commercialism, merely through a 
gentleman's desire to please. He would no more force an unwelcome 
stanza on his readers than he would force an unwelcome wine on his 
guest at dinner. For the same reason he wished to offend nobody's 
literary theories, and made friends with the old and the new school 
alike. He admired Pope and Ariosto both. He edited impartially the 
medieval "Sir Tristrem," and the works of Swift. His defence of 
what was new in his own verse, as given in the introductory epistles 
of "Marmion," is as diplomatic and ingratiating as the Prefaces of 
Wordsworth were tactless and blundering. 

Cease then, my friend! a moment cease, 
And leave these classic tomes in peace! 
Of Roman and of Grecian lore 
Sure mortal brain can hold no more. 
These ancients, as Noll Bluff might say, 
"Were pretty fellows in their day," 
But time and tide o'er all prevail — 
On Christmas eve a Christmas tale — 
Of wonder and of war — "Profane! 
What! leave the lofty Latian strain. 
Her stately prose, her verse's charms, 
To hear the clash of rusty arms; 



* Italics ours. 



[ "4 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

In Fairy-land or Limbo lost, 

To jostle conjurer and ghost, 

Goblin and witch!" — Nay, Heber dear, 

Before you touch my charter, hear. 

This is good poetry largely because it is the poetry of a perfect 
gentleman. 

Scott was popular because of his novelty, but wherein did that 
novelty consist ? Not in a return to the Middle Ages, for Home and 
Beattie among his countrymen, and Warton and Chatterton and 
half a dozen novelists among the English had already been there. 
Southey's "Madoc," published in the same year as "The Lay," was 
more medieval in date, and yet did not sell. Scott's work was new 
because it introduced genuineness and humanity into a field where 
they had before been lacking, because he gave a vivid picture of 
the life of a bygone people instead of negative scholarship and 
colorless literary conventions. His popular contemporaries in Ger- 
many, Uhland and Fouque, like our own Longfellow, appealed to the 
love of a picturesquely conventional antiquity, and their once great 
vogue has gone the way of all things built on convention. Uhland's 
knights, in the biting words of Heine, were ''leaden armor, stuffed 
with flowers." Brandes's comment on ''The Magic Ring" is equally 
caustic and true: "The horses are the only creatures in the book 
whose psychology Fouque has successfully mastered." It was a far 
cry from such literature to Scott's picture of Watt Tinlinn, or 
William of Deloraine, that "stout, moss-trooping Scot," or the 
picture of King James's army given in Canto V of "Marmion," or 
the guardroom scene in "The Lady of the Lake." His popular appeal 
was legitimate and noble, the appeal which always goes with a 
genuine, sympathizing, and not too inaccurate picture of life. 

Scott was popular because of his virility. It is this very quality 
that has made him underrated by the neurotic tendency in late 
nineteenth-century criticism, which would leave his poetry to boys 
because it is too healthy for men of the world. This quality in his 
own day increased a poetical vogue which began in the year of 
Austerlitz, decreased after Leipsic, and fell off markedly after 
Waterloo. The manly element in Wordsworth was precisely what 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the public did not see; but in Scott it leaned out from every page, 
and cried to the families of those embattled against Napoleon: 

Where's the coward that would not dare 
To fight for such a land! 

Scott was popular because he was a good story-teller. Could any 
man have a better claim on the enthusiasm of his audience? If the 
vision of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Shelley was higher, 
that of Scott was clearer; if he was less of an artist in cadences he 
was more of an artist in incidents; and it was partly by his art that 
he held his public. 

There is general agreement as to the qualities of his verse and 
general disagreement as to its merit. All admit his vigor, his whole- 
someness, his wealth of antiquarian color. All recognize his lack 
of delicate undertones in rhythm, character, and suggestive word. 
Something might be said for the epic force of his openings, which 
come much nearer the dignity of Homer than his rather trailing 
conclusions; something for the sweep and vigor of his battle scenes, 
unequaled in their kind among modern English poets. Still the 
fluctuations of his reputation can no longer be influenced by dis- 
coveries of critics where all lies on the surface, but must be left 
to changing taste. This much, however, can certainly be said for 
him: he combined a high degree of merit with a wide popular appeal 
better than any other poet between Dry den and Tennyson. Byron 
wrote worse poetry which had a greater vogue and better poetry 
which was less recognized, but could not ride so well the literary 
and the lucrative Pegasus at once. For a hundred and fifty years no 
other man forced so many of his contemporaries to read poetry that 
was at least reasonably poetical. Such an achievement may be a 
triumph in the realm of pedagogy more than in that of art; such a 
man may be rather a great amuser or literary leader than a great 
poet — we will not quarrel about words — the man was great and the 
achievement no less so. No ossified Hayleys, no lacrymose Charlotte 
Smiths, no crude purveyors of German melodrama fattened during 
his reign. He drew the masses of England up with him to his plateau, 
while Wordsworth and Coleridge soared lonely to the mountain 

[ ii6 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

peak. There is an instinct toward popularity which comes from 
vanity or greed, and that is destructive to Hterature. There is 
another instinct toward popularity which arises from sympathy 
and a desire for public service. That was the attitude of Scott, and 
at bottom, while it may not conduce to the most perfect art, it was 
no ignoble mood and could result in nothing but benefit to man- 
kind. Even if it chained Scott's poetry to the earth, it gave him also 
the vigor of the soil. The epic element may be far inferior to 
Homer's, but it is there. The lyrics may fly nearer to the ground 
than Shelley's, but they fly on a sure wing. Nothing could be more 
untrue than the charge made by Byron in "English Bards" that 
Scott had sold his literary conscience for gain. The direct road to 
the highest literary development of which he was capable lay 
through popular applause; and the relative merits of his various 
works are in almost exact proportion to the welcome given them by 
his age. 

And what was happening elsewhere in the world of letters during 
Scott's monarchy? We can hardly say that his triumph meant 
popular injustice to others, for, with the exception of Wordsworth, 
the great unpopular writers during this period were noticeably 
barren. Between 1805 and 181 2 Coleridge wrote not a single poem 
of distinction, the little good work that he did in the Lakes having 
been composed earlier. Southey was beginning "Roderick" and 
finishing "The Curse of Kehama," which found as much favor as 
it deserved. Blake, who had earlier uttered some great, though none 
too lucid, lyrical outbursts, was sinking deeper and deeper into the 
abyss of unintelligibility, where occasional lines of inspiration 
glimmered like a miner's lamp. Jane Austen was not publishing, and 
apparently was doing little writing except that of revision. Both 
she and Blake were non-existent at this time in the eyes of the 
literary world. Even the inferior but more popular Rogers was in- 
dulging in the most unproductive period of his career. With Words- 
worth the case was different. He always has been and always will 
be the poet of a few; yet a comparison of his success during these 
years with that of Scott is a study in the irony of history. He was 
in the prime and glory of his creative powers; he was, and probably 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

felt that he was, the greatest poet of the age; he was writing of 
rural scenery when the praise of it was a literary fad, so much so 
that Miss Mitford deplored "the prevailing cant upon those sub- 
jects." Yet the discerning criticised and the reading public ignored 
him. His fellow poet Southey called his great ode on immortality 
''a dark subject darkly handled"; and Jeffrey, discussing the 1807 
volume, declared the ode "the most illegible and unintelligible part 
of the publication." Reviewing the same volume, Byron, then a 
mere boy, expressed what appears to have been the common 
opinion of those who knew Wordsworth at all: "We think these 
volumes display a genius worthy of higher pursuits, and regret that 
Mr. W. confines his muse to such trifling subjects. . . . Many, with 
inferior abilities, have acquired a loftier seat on Parnassus." Another 
stumbling-block to Wordsworth's popularity, wholly different from 
his "trifling subjects," is indicated by Byron some years later: "His 
performances since 'Lyrical Ballads' are miserably inadequate to 
the ability which lurks within him. . . . Who can understand 
him? . . . Jacob Behmen [Boehme], Swedenborg, and Joanna 
Southcote, are mere types of this arch-apostle of mystery and 
mysticism." Wordsworth in 1813, when the bulk of his best work 
had been before the public for some years, declared: "My literary 
employments bring me no emoluments, nor promise any." In this 
year Scott was preparing to build Abbotsford on the profits from 
his verse. 

Between "The Lay" and "Marmion" and in the same year with 
Moore's "Melodies" and Crabbe's "Parish Register," Wordsworth 
published a large amount of his noblest poetry. Much of this, how- 
ever, had been written some time before. To his public he seemed 
an eager but unsuccessful competitor with the popular favorites. 
One who follows the inner life of the poet finds in him also, as in 
Southey, Coleridge, Blake, and Austen, a comparatively barren 
period, as if his star paled too under the blaze of the northern 
meteor. This fact is best shown by a comparison of Wordsworth's 
poetical achievement during the eight years 1 797-1804 with that 
during the eight following, 1805-1812, the period of Scott's unchal- 
lenged leadership. "The Excursion" belongs partly to both periods, 

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THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

partly to a time following 1812, and should weigh but little in the 
balance. Aside from this, and with "The Prelude" given its right 
niche in the earlier period, Wordsworth produced nearly three times 
as much poetry during the eight years before 1805 as during the 
eight years following. Moreover, the greatest poem of the 1807 
volume, the ode on immortality, though finished in that year, was 
begun "two years at least" earlier. Also during this time Words- 
worth in a number of poems showed the influence of Scott much 
more than either before or after. In metre and occasionally in 
medieval color the greater poet imitated the reigning favorite; in 
thought and purpose he reacted to the opposite extreme, empha- 
sizing the triumph of man over himself, not the external battle or 
adventure. Wordsworth and Scott at this time were acquaintances, 
with much admiration for each other as men, but with none too 
much sympathy in literary taste. 

Scott may have increased the enthusiasm of Wordsworth before 
the picture of Peele Castle, 

Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time; 

or may have suggested in the humbly realistic "Waggoner" the 
allusion to 

that pile of stones 

Heaped over brave King Dunmail's bones; 

His who had once supreme command, 

Last king of rocky Cumberland. 

The influence appears unquestionably in "The Horn of Egremont 
Castle," and "The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," both 
founded on ancient Cumberland legends. In the latter the medieval 
minstrel gives the attitude of Scott in martial octosyllabics, and 
Wordsworth utters his own view in musing pentameters. In a prose 
comment the author "cannot conclude this note without adding a 
word upon the subject of those numerous and noble feudal Edifices, 
spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of some of which are, at this day, 
so great an ornament to that interesting country." The trail of 
antiquity is found most at length in "The White Doe of Rylstone," 
which inculcates a moral the opposite of Scott's, but in metre and 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

descriptive passages is often reminiscent of him. Here, as in the 
"Lay," generations of fierce armored barons "are buried upright" 
or "uncoffined lie"; and among the leaders 

An aged knight, to danger steeled 

wears the helmet on his white locks. The fourth canto opens with 
a marked verbal likeness to the beginning of "Rokeby," which was 
written after "The White Doe" but published before it: 

'Tis night: in silence looking down, 
The Moon, from cloudless ether, sees 
A Camp, and a beleaguered Town, 
And Castle, like a stately crown 
On the steep rocks of winding Tees. 

Whether or not the relative barrenness of so many gifted contem- 
poraries was increased by Scott's glory, no one can say. In each 
case, other causes could easily be pointed out. Nevertheless the 
great unpopular poetry of the age divides mainly into two waves: 
that of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake before 1805; that of 
Keats and Shelley after Byron's great vogue had begun to decline. 
From 1805 to 181 8 while Scott and Byron in turn played 

The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme, 

posterity will find more good verse among the favorites of their 
age than among the great ignored. Nor can we avoid feeling a note 
of bitterness in one of Wordsworth's letters of 181 2, when Scott 
was at his height and Byron was about to rise higher still: "I had 
erroneously calculated upon the degree in which my writings were 
likely to suit the taste of the times." After all, every poet seeks in 
popular approval something nobler than applause, the confirmation 
of his own faith in his vision. If he fails to get that, however 
defiantly he may talk, there is danger that his faith in himself may 
waver; or, if he is too self-assured for this, he may lose faith in 
his power to make men understand him, a form of self-distrust as 
withering poetically as the other. 

It is time to consider some lesser figures among the favorites. 
During the reign of Scott there were three poets who were inferior 

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THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

to him in merit and popular appeal, but who approached him in 
both. In 1807 Tom Moore, that ''abridgement of all that is pleasant 
in man," began his long series of "Irish Melodies," which sung 
themselves into everybody's heart. In the same year the veteran 
Crabbe, after a silence of two decades, reentered the literary arena 
with his "Parish Register," four editions of which were called for 
within eighteen months. In 1809 Campbell published his "Gertrude 
of Wyoming," in company with several shorter poems, and found 
also an enthusiastic reception. "Whatever had been said of 'The 
Pleasures of Hope,' was repeated with increased emphasis in praise 
of 'Gertrude.' . . . The reception given to the poem in America was 
cordial and flattering." Mary Mitford, like thousands of other 
British ladies, found it "that most exquisite of all human produc- 
tions." Perhaps it revived enthusiasm for the overworked metre 
which it used. At any rate, less than two years after its appearance, 
according to Miss Mitford, "Messieurs the reviewers are unanimous 
in their recommendation of the Spenser stanza"; and these demands 
of the reviewers were met a few months later by "Childe Harold." 
Campbell was the fellow countryman of Scott, and Moore and 
Crabbe were both favorites with him. There was a mutual sympathy 
among the popular favorites which argues a common element in 
their work. Different as their poems appear, they alike avoided the 
mysticism and brooding, dimly formulated thought of the great 
unpopular visionaries. They all, though in widely different ways, 
combined picturesqueness, lucidity, human life, and narrative inci- 
dent; and while they spread the sails of imagination, they carried 
what seemed to John Bull a wholesome ballast of common sense. 

Meanwhile James Montgomery, the poet of Sheffield, had a con- 
siderable, though minor vogue among readers more pious than 
literary. His "West Indies," 18 10, which was widely read, poured 
righteous indignation on the slave trade, and contained some of the 
merits of the pure-hearted poet whom it imitated: 

Lamented Cowper! in thy path I tread; 

O! that on me were thy meek spirit shed! 

The woes that wring my bosom once were thine; 

Be all thy virtues, all thy genius, mine. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Less can be said in praise of his oversentimentalized "Wanderer of 
Switzerland" (1806), which laments in dialogue the subjugation 
of Tell's country by the French. 

Shepherd. "Switzerland then gave thee birth?" 
Wanderer. "Ay — 'twas Switzerland of yore; 

But, degraded spot of earth, 

Thou art Switzerland no more." 

Montgomery was of Scotch blood and born in Ayrshire when Burns 
was a boy there. From 1805 to 1812 Crabbe was the only poet with 
any popularity who was not either Irish or Scotch. Montgomery, 
like the other, somewhat later poet of Sheffield, Ebenezer Elliott, is 
not among the giants; but we must remember in favor of these men 
that they wrote among much less encouraging surroundings than 
most of the great masters. Wordsworth in a discussion on national 
education declared that "Heaven and Hell are scarcely more dif- 
ferent from each other than Sheffield and Manchester, etc., differ 
from the plains and valleys of Surrey, Essex, Cumberland, or 
Westmoreland." 

The popular reign of Scott, if it did not assist, at least accom- 
panied a considerable vogue for several of his minor countrymen. 
"The Sabbath," by James Grahame, a wholesome but rather unin- 
spired poem of the Cowper type, which first appeared anonymously 
in 1804, ran through three editions in 1805, during the dawn of the 
great Sir Walter's reign. Southey, who admired it, said that it "had 
found its way from one end of Great Britain to the other." None 
of Joanna Baillie's plays had won much success on the stage before 
1805; but in 1 8 10 she achieved a genuine triumph on the boards 
of Edinburgh with her "Family Legend." 

In 1 81 2 with "Childe Harold," Byron became the reigning 
favorite, and Scott very soon withdrew from the competition. 
"Rokeby" and "The Bridal of Triermain" were both published 
in January, 1813, after which date the author planned no long new 
poem. His "Lord of the Isles" and "Harold the Dauntless," though 
mainly written afterward, had been conceived before "Rokeby" 
appeared, and were evidently completed by a perfunctory effort. 

[ 122 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

"Notwithstanding therefore, the eminent success of Byron, and the 
great chance of his taking the wind out of my sails, there was, I 
judged, a species of cowardice in desisting from the task which I 
had undertaken." Both sales and critical approval, though still great, 
were already declining, and the poetical supremacy of Scott was over. 

The rise of Byron, however, was not the only reason why Scott 
abandoned rhyme. He had good judgment enough to realize that his 
poetical vein, which was a narrow one, was becoming exhausted. 
More than that, a swarm of imitators had made him eager to leave 
the old paths. "The present author," he said in 1830, "like Bobadil, 
had taught his trick of fence to a hundred gentlemen (and 
ladies), who could fence very nearly or quite as well as himself. 
For this there was no remedy; the harmony became tiresome and 
ordinary, and both the original inventor and his invention must 
have fallen into contempt if he had not found out another road to 
public favor." "Indeed, in most similar cases," remarked Scott very 
truly, "the inventors of such novelties have their reputation de- 
stroyed by their own imitators, as Actaeon fell under the fury of his 
own dogs." 

We will not counteract the beneficent destructiveness of nature by 
naming all the "hundred gentlemen and ladies." A few examples 
will show how "both the original inventor and his invention must 
have fallen into contempt" had they remained long in such company. 
Among the "gentlemen," William Sotheby, "that itch of scribbling 
personified," as Byron called him, published a little before 
"Rokeby" his "Constance de Castile." It is a rhyming narrative in 
ten cantos, which represents "Marmion" translated from England 
to Spain and from good poetry to bad. 

Throned in St. Andrew's holy walls, 
Edward each summoned warrior calls. 
Knight, banneret, and baron bold. 
Who of his realm high tenure hold. 
There, too, in pomp of priestly state, 
Albert, the mitred abbot, sate. 

Among the "ladies" was Margaret Holford (Mrs. Hodson), whose 
"Wallace, or the Fight of Falkirk: A Metrical Romance" came 

[ 123 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

close on the heels of "Marmion" like a jackal after a lion, and, 
according to Mary Mitford, "is said to have excited the jealousy of 
our great modern minstrel." Miss Holford also wrote a few ballads, 
and poured out her feminine admiration for Scott in lines on his 
"Lay." In some very astounding and unprophetic verses she 
could say: 

Methinks, arrived at Fame's eternal dome, 
Already round my brow her leaves entwine; 
Smiling, I mark how Time's o'erwhelming gloom 
Steals silently o'er many a soul supine, 
And feel oblivion never can be mine. 

One can see how a lesser man than Scott would not wish to be 
bracketed with her. Miss Mitford herself some years later became 
an eminent prose realist. At this time she was a hopelessly minor 
poetess, who also wrote imitations of Sir Walter in manner quite 
unlike "Our Village." For twenty years the "Harp of the North" 
was waked by Tom, Dick, and Harry, 

How rude soe'er the hand 
That ventured o'er its magic maze to stray. 

The competitors who drove Scott out of his field were not con- 
fined to the absurd, but included genuine poets. Byron himself in 
1 813 swung over to the "light horseman stanza" of the Border 
Minstrel, in which he varied from utter dissimilarity to obvious 
imitation. Rogers tried the same narrative metre the next year in 
"Jacqueline." 

Meanwhile a note less borrowed perhaps but more closely kin- 
dred came from Scott's old friend and protegi James Hogg. Early 
disadvantages belated the harvest of his genius, which did not come 
until after he was forty. His "Mountain Bard" in 1807 had con- 
tained some good local color and grim humor, but had made no 
marked impression. In the year of "Rokeby" and "The Giaour" he 
published his one great poem, "The Queen's Wake"; and Hogg at 
his best here does not compare so unfavorably with Scott at his 
second best. Hogg was no mere imitator. He spoke truly, though 
with characteristic conceit, when he said: "Dear Sir Walter! Ye 

[ 124 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

can never suppose that I belang to your School o' Chivalry 1 Ye are 
the king o' that school, but I'm the king o' the Mountain and Fairy 
School, which is a far higher ane nor yours." He was more akin to 
the Celtic dreamer and less to the Scandinavian Viking than his 
famous friend, yet enough like his great contemporary to make that 
proud though genial spirit feel crowded in his poetic domain and 
restless there. 

Hogg has far worse lapses of taste than are ever found in 
"Marmion" or "Rokeby," and none of the epic sweep and dignity 
which Scott attained partially and fitfully; but the lesser man has 
the greater variety, the more strings to his harp. Of Border chivalry 
he can tell, not as well as the "Last Minstrel," but very respectably. 

O, but the Harden lads were true, 

And bore them bravely in the broil! 

The doughty laird of wild Buccleugh 
Raged like a lion in the toil. 

The supernatural of Hogg is much more crude at its worst than 
that of Scott, but more naively genuine at its best, as in "The Abbot 
M'Kinnon" when the dead saint whom the lustful abbot serves 
comes back to earth to drown the offender. 

Then the old man arose and stood up on the prow. 

And fixed his dim eyes on the ocean below; 

And they heard him saying, "Oh, woe is me! 

But great as the sin must the sacrifice be." 

Oh, mild was his eye and his manner sublime, 

When he looked unto heaven, and said — "Now is the time." 

The two most successful moods of Hogg are hardly found in Scott's 
verse. The first of these is the Ettrick Shepherd's sly humor mixed 
with diablerie, in which he betrays a slight affinity to "Tam 
O'Shanter." "The Witch of Fife" is a humble masterpiece in 
this vein. 

They flew to the vaultis of merry Carlisle, 

Quhair they enterit free as ayr; 
And they drank and they drank of the bishopis wyne 

Quhill they culde drynk ne mair. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

The auld guidman he grew so crouse, 

He dancit on the mouldy ground, 
And he sang the bonniest sangs of Fyfe, 

And he tuzzlit the kerlyngs* round. 

A more realistic and satirical humor appears in his description of 
the competing bards, the greatest poets of ancient Scotland: 

A simpler race you shall not see, 
Awkward and vain as men can be. 

Hogg had no romantic illusions as to the character of the genus 
irritabile. But his best work of all is that of elvish, Celtic unrealism, 
as it comes pure from the wellspring in "Kilmeny": 

They bore her far to a mountain green. 
To see what mortal never had seen; 
And they seated her high on a purple sward. 
And bade her heed what she saw and heard, 
And note the changes the spirits wrought, 
For now she lived in the land of thought. 

"The Queen's Wake," like "The Canterbury Tales," encloses a 
series of recitals in a narrative framework. It makes no attempt 
to rival Chaucer in character analysis, but creates a picturesque 
panorama of Queen Mary's faction-torn court at Holyrood palace. 
The whole ends with a Parthian shot at contemporary criticism, for 
the prize is given to a lay which Hogg as well as most of his readers 
must have considered among the poorest. 

'Twas party all, not minstrel worth, 
But honour of the south and north. 

After 1 813 Hogg, like his great brother poet, fell off markedly 
in power and subsequently in popularity; but unlike Scott, he did 
not know enough to quit fishing the empty pond. His later medieval 
romances, "Mador of the Moore" and "Queen Hynde," are spine- 
less imitations, relieved only by a few touches of conscious — or 
unconscious — humor. The year of "Rokeby" and "The Queen's 
Wake" closed, not only the popular reign of Scott in verse but also 

* carlins, old hags. 

[ 126 ] 



THE POPULAR SUPREMACY OF SCOTT 

that of his countrymen, for Campbell by this time was almost dead 
as a poet. Many an edition of "Marmion" and "The Lady of the 
Lake," of "The Queen's Wake" and "The Pleasures of Hope" was 
yet to be issued; but the prestige of all the Scotch poets, great and 
little, Scott, Hogg, Campbell, Montgomery, Grahame, Joanna 
Baillie, had reached its meridian and was on the downward slope. 



f 127 ] 



CHAPTER VI 

The London Society Poets: The Popular Supremacy of 
Byron, i8 12-1820 

All of the good poetry which we have discussed hitherto came from 
the provinces. It is time now to consider London. The flower of neo- 
classical literature from the Restoration to the death of Pope was 
mainly the literature of London authors, of men for whom, even 
when their permanent residence was not there, the great city was 
the Mecca of their hopes and ideals. They were Londoners moreover 
of the upper social strata. Sir George Etherege, Sir John Vanbrugh, 
Congreve, who wished to be forgotten as a dramatist and remem- 
bered only as a gentleman, were types of the Restoration comedian. 
It was as courtiers and men of affairs that Dryden, Addison, and 
Swift moved in metropolitan circles; the latter considered as tragedy 
a life of retirement that would have delighted Wordsworth. Pope, 
too feeble in body for the salon or the cabinet, was none the less the 
associate of literati in high social standing, and Prior the genial 
companion of men much more important socially than himself. The 
peculiar quality of Augustan literature has been considered as the 
voice of a temporary spirit pervading all Great Britain; was it not 
rather to a considerable degree the voice of a permanent spirit, 
always to be found in a certain class of a certain region? The Augus- 
tan age can be partly, though of course not wholly, explained on the 
ground that other classes and districts were comparatively dumb; 
and the romantic generation on the ground that they passionately 
and eloquently found their voice. The districts of Bristol, West- 
moreland, and the Border had never been genuinely neo-classic, 
they had simply been poetically barren. From the days of Cromwell 
down, the upper middle class, except when its writers became the 

[ 128 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

protiges of noblemen, had been far less consistently imbued with 
the spirit of Boileau and Racine than the courtly wits of Holland 
House and Saint James. Where writers of humbler status did follow 
the Pope tradition, as in the case of Johnson and Goldsmith, they 
were usually denizens of London. Turning now from Southey, Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, Scott, and their minor co-workers, all men of 
the middle class and of the provinces, one finds in the city and the 
social life which had produced Pope and Addison a century before, 
the spirit and tradition of the Queen Anne wits, mixed with much 
that was utterly foreign to their age, but surviving here late into 
the nineteenth century as it survived nowhere else. 

Beginning about 1800 there gradually formed at London a little 
knot of poets, who were on terms of close familiarity with each other, 
and who, though not by any means always of blue blood themselves, 
had the entree of the best society. Whatever the rank of their ances- 
tors, they themselves were finished men of the world, habitually 
frequenting homes and clubs where Keats was uninvited and Words- 
worth a discordant note. Their attitude toward life was often colored 
by the atmosphere of clubs and the broad but shallow cosmopoli- 
tanism of high society. As a literary phenomenon, the chief mark 
of this group was the close union of romantic medievalism. Oriental- 
ism, and Wertherism with the most unadulterated type of the Pope 
tradition. Every member of it except Rogers and Luttrell wrote 
poetry that according to any possible definition would be called 
wildly romantic. Every member of it without exception wrote a 
considerable amount of verse in the most servile imitation of 
Augustan models. The bulk of this latter work as poetry deserved 
the neglect that it has met; but as an index of literary currents it 
has that human interest which it never had as literature. 

The first to arrive on the field was Samuel Rogers, a wealthy and 
artistic young man of the upper middle class. Before 1793 he had 
made his home in the neighboring country at Newington Green, and 
while there had won nation-wide popularity with his "Pleasures of 
Memory." After 1793 he lived partly in London, wholly there after 
1798, and soon became the friend of Charles James Fox, Lord 
Holland, and other prominent men. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

In 1799 Thomas Moore journeyed to the same city, and, like 
Rogers, made it his home for years. His genial personality, rare 
musical powers, and Irish wit rendered him soon a popular favorite 
among people of rank, including Lord Moira; and his first volume 
was dedicated to the Prince of Wales. After his marriage in 181 1 
he settled his family at Sloperton Cottage, more than half way to 
Bristol and within two miles of the poet Bowles, whose warm friend 
he became; but he was still much in London society, and a Lon- 
doner in all his affiliations and feelings. In 1803, Thomas Campbell, 
already famous as the author of "The Pleasures of Hope," came 
down from Scotland, married, and took up his residence in Pimlico. 
A few months later he settled at Sydenham in Kent, where he lived 
for seventeen years; but was much in the metropolis, in contact 
with its writers and social leaders. 

The greatest addition of all to this band was Lord Byron when 
he came back from his Mediterranean tour in 181 2. Before that 
date he had neither had much personal intercourse with great poets, 
nor, according to Lord Holland, had he moved in the best society. 
He had already, however, shown his mental affinity for Moore, 
whose none too chaste "Poems by the Late Thomas Little," he tells 
us, "I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth year." 
In 1812 he published the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," woke 
up one morning and found himself famous; and for the next three 
or four years he was the central figure of the London society poets 
as well as the lion of the hour. In 181 6 he broke with his wife, was 
insulted in the streets of London, and left the city and the nation 
never to return. He still corresponded with Moore and Rogers; but 
henceforth new influences were at work on him. 

A minor figure in this band — very minor as a poet though less 
so as a personality — was W. R. Spencer, a man like Byron of noble 
family. Byron, Moore, and he were the only three literary men in 
England who were members of Watier's, the fashionable dandies' 
club, where Beau Brummel, its perpetual president, was gambling 
his life away. Another lesser light, who blossomed into minor poetry 
late in life and after Byron's departure, was Henry Luttrell. Richard 
Sheridan, the aged dramatist and author, was also much in their 

[ 130 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

company, although his writing days were past. Nor must we over- 
look Lord Holland, socially one of the leading figures and in litera- 
ture negligible, but still an author. An eager student of Spanish 
writers, especially the dramatists, he translated a number of Spanish 
plays, in 1806 published a memoir of Lope de Vega, and in 18 13 
welcomed his fellow pro-Spaniard Southey to the great resources 
of his library. 

Rogers appears to have been the personal magnet who drew these 
different particles together, as Coleridge did the Bristol Eddy, and 
Scott the northern one. Rogers, in spite of his caustic tongue, had 
an inborn ability not merely for getting acquainted, but also for 
making enduring friendships. He probably met Moore in 1805, and 
knew Spencer and Luttrell before that. As early as 1801 he and 
Lord Holland had dined with Campbell; and it was he who almost 
immediately after Byron's return from the East, introduced the 
wandering Childe to Lord Holland. 

We have here a band of poets representing, if not a literary school, 
at least a distinct literary type. Aside from their late and rather 
illogical championship of Pope they built up no artistic theory; 
they were neither critics nor philosophers; but they showed in both 
their lives and their writings common elements lacking in all their 
great contemporaries. They represented a social "set," at times a 
distinct social group. This began somewhat after 1800, reached its 
maximum during the membership of Byron, and after that grad- 
ually disintegrated. Its two chief rendezvous were Holland House 
and the home of Rogers. A third, less important for us, was the resi- 
dence of Lydia White, an enthusiastic spinster and entertainer of 
social lions, so enthusiastic that in her last days, with rouge on her 
cheeks and death in her heart, she entertained them still. 

Macaulay in 1831 called Holland House "the favorite resort of 
wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers, 
and statesmen"; and as he found it then, it had been for a third 
of a century. Southey, who was there in 1813, describes a typical 
scene. "I dined on Sunday at Holland House, with some eighteen 
or twenty persons. Sharp was there, who introduced me with all 
due form to Rogers and to Sir James Mackintosh. ... In the 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

evening Lord Byron came in." The great mansion, with its vast 
library, its magnificent dinners, its galaxy of intellectual stars, was 
an inspiration to the urban or cosmopolitan genius as Derwent and 
Skiddaw were to Wordsworth or Smailholm keep and the ruins of 
Hermitage castle to Scott. Unlike them, the literary inspiration 
which it gave was eighteenth century and conservative. Here lin- 
gered as tradition all that had been best in the days of Queen Anne. 
Addison had lived here after 1716 with his wife, the Countess of 
Warwick. Charles James Fox, the brilliant younger brother of Lord 
Holland, was a great admirer of Pope's "Eloisa," and of Voltaire's 
"Zaire." Lord Holland himself, according to Moore, "inclined to 
place Virgil and Racine in the very highest rank," and "gave the 
last lines of Denham's 'Cooper's Hill' as a specimen of perfect har- 
mony in versification." It was natural that poets who dined here 
frequently, walked where Addison had walked, and discussed with 
their entertainers the beauties of Pope, should feel more sympathy 
with the neo-classic tradition than their brethren of the Quantock 
hills and Cumberland mountains. 

In 1803 Rogers moved to a house in St. James's Place built and 
decorated under his own directions ; and there he lived for over half 
a century. The building came to be the expression of the author's 
somewhat finical but genuinely artistic taste. A frieze copied from 
the Parthenon ran around the staircase; rare paintings, many of 
which are now in the National Gallery, and copies of antique 
sculpture adorned the walls. Like Holland House it was of a nature 
to favor neo-classic tastes. "This coordination in Rogers' house was 
perfect. The general impression was one of complete harmony, and 
that impression was confirmed by the effect of every detail. . . . 
It is the same in his poetry as it was in his home, in his manners 
as it was in his style of prose composition. 'Of nothing too much' 
was its motto." Walter Scott wrote to him of his home in 1820: 
"As you have made the most classical museum I can conceive, I 
have been attempting a Gothic." "His breakfast table was perfect 
in all respects," says Barry Cornwall; "and the company — where 
literature mixed with fashion and rank, each having a fair propor- 
tion—was always agreeable. And in the midst of all his hospitable 

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THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

glory was the little old pleasant man, not yet infirm, with his many 
anecdotes, and sub-acid words that gave flavor and pungency to 
the general talk." Here for years the witty and kind-hearted, though 
caustic-tongued poet kept something as near a literary salon as an 
unaided bachelor could be expected to offer. To breakfast with 
Rogers and to dine at Holland House was to enter the best literary 
society of the time. 

Passing from Grasmere, or even Ashestiel, to the London society 
poets meant entering a new atmosphere. Moore's correspondence 
has occasional enthusiastic references to nature or to ancient Ire- 
land; but these are exceedingly rare. His letters are largely made 
up of breakfasts, dinners, amiable chit-chat, and all the pleasures 
of a society man. We find a significant entry in his diary: "I said 
how well calculated the way in which Scott had been brought up 
was to make a writer of poetry and romance, as it combined all 
that knowledge of rural life and rural legends which is to be gained 
by living among the peasantry and joining in their sports, with all 
the advantages which an aristocratic education gives. I said that 
the want of this manly training showed itself in my poetry, which 
would perhaps have had a far more vigorous character if it had not 
been for the sort of boudoir education I had received." In 1807 he 
wrote to Miss Godfrey: "How go on Spenser [Spencer] and Rogers, 
and the rest of those agreeable rattles, who seem to think life such 
a treat that they can never get enough of it?" Spencer was a brilliant 
drawing-room entertainer, who delighted Madame de Stael with 
"his universality of conversation." Byron mentions "Moore, Camp- 
bell, Rogers, Spencer, as poets; and how many conversationists to 
be added to the galaxy of stars." Campbell was a somewhat more 
humble figure socially, yet in 181 2 we find him "dancing a reel with 
royalty"; and a little later Hazlitt, in lecturing on the living poets, 
put him in the same "hot-pressed superfine-wove paper" school as 
Rogers. Their urban attitude appears in its most unattractive phase 
in Byron. In 18 14 he wrote of the Ettrick shepherd: "The said Hogg 
is a strange being. ... I think very highly of him, as a poet; but 
he, and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours, are spoilt by liv- 
ing in little circles and petty societies. London and the world is the 

[ ^2,^ ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

only place to take the conceit out of a man." Some time later he 
alludes to Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Joanna Baillie, Bowles, 
Milman, Barry Cornwall, and apparently even Campbell; and says: 
"The pity of these men is, that they never lived either in high life, 
nor in solitude: there is no medium for the knowledge of the busy or 
the still world. . . . Now Moore and I, the one by circumstances, 
and the other by birth, happened to be free of the corporation, and 
to have entered into its pulses and passions, quarum partes juimus. 
Both of us have learnt by this much which nothing else could have 
taught us." Only compare with this the utterance of Wordsworth: 
'Tt is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine 
enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons 
who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world; among 
those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of 
consideration in society." Then he adds: "This is a truth, and an 
awful one, because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my 
sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and rever- 
ence for God"; which is in odd contrast with what Moore wrote 
confidentially to his mother: "If I am to be poor, I had rather be a 
poor counsellor than a poor poet; for there is ridicule attached to 
the latter, which the former may escape." Is it any wonder that the 
London society poets championed Pope, and that Wordsworth 
depreciated him? The chasm was not wholly that between the age 
of Queen Anne and the age of George IV; it was also a permanent 
chasm between two different types of life and thought. 

Rogers, the most catholic in his friendships though the most 
narrow in his poetical range, was after 1803 the lifelong friend of 
Wordsworth. Byron admired Coleridge's "Christabel," helped to 
get his "Remorse" acted, and praised Southey's "Roderick." In gen- 
eral, however, there was an instinctive hostility in literature, and 
at times in personal relations, between the London society poets and 
the "Lakers." Rogers apparently was no enthusiast about Coleridge. 
Byron, who evidently believed consistency a virtue unworthy of a 
peer, lashed the whole Lake coterie both in print and in correspond- 
ence. Apart from his slashing invective, each group is mentioned 

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THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

with astonishing rareness in the correspondence of the other. Toward 
Scott, whose genial manliness adapted itself equally well to the back- 
woodsman and the lord, the Holland House authors were uniformly- 
cordial; of the minor Scotch writers they naturally knew little. 

Their work in poetry, as we have said, alternated between the 
florid Dr. Jekyll of wild romance and the wizened Mr. Hyde of neo- 
classic tradition. The latter, being less known, may be taken up 
the first. 

Rogers had already published his "Pleasures of Memory." His 
"Epistle to a Friend" (1798) and "Human Life" (1819) are in 
the same vein of sentimental didacticism, though there is much 
kindly experience in the latter poem which makes one see how the 
author could believe it his best. The aims and models of both poems 
are indicated in the opening words to the Preface of the earlier one: 
"Every reader turns with pleasure to those passages of Horace, 
and Pope and Boileau, which describe how they lived and where they 
dwelt; and which, being interspersed among their satirical writings, 
derive a secret and irresistible grace from the contrast, and are 
admirable examples of what in painting is termed repose." Of the 
early Pope discipleship and "Pleasures of Hope" of Campbell we 
have already spoken. He produced nothing worth mentioning in 
this vein during his London years; but the spirit of it was still in 
him as shown by the part he played in the Bowles-Pope Contro- 
versy. In 1 814 he shocked the London audience before which he 
was lecturing by preferring Pope to Dryden. Around 1810 he im- 
pressed Leigh Hunt as a "French Virgil," "a taste over anxious not 
to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing- 
room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conver- 
sation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine." Spencer's 
longest poem, "The Year of Sorrow," is in Dryden's manner; in it 
he says to the "Daughters of Genius" : 

Yours be the task. . . . 
The rights of antique beauty to proclaim. 
The Gothic fiend from all her realms to chase, 
And throne the Grecian goddess in her place. 

[ 13s ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 
The bulk of his meager output is society verse, mildly reminiscent 
of Prior. 

Tom Moore wrote many hundred lines in the pure Pope tradition, 
much of it inspired by his unfortunate trip to America, of which 
the following extract from his poem ''To the Honorable W. R. 
Spencer" may be sufficient for a Yankee audience: 

Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats, and all 
From the rude wigwam to the congress hall, 
From man the savage, whether slaved or free, 
To man the civilized, less tame than he, — 
'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife 
Betwixt half polished and half barbarous life; 
Where every ill the ancient world could brew 
Is mixed with every grossness of the new ; 
Where all corrupts, though little can entice, 
And naught is known of luxury but its vice. 

"Corruption" and "Intolerance," in the same shopworn dress, were 
published 1808; and briefer feeble echoes of the once great couplet 
were composed by him even after 1830. As for all his society verse 
in various flippant metres, "The Two Penny Post-Bag," "The Fudge 
Family in Paris," etc., it is far enough from the wits of Queen Anne 
but much nearer to them than to Wordsworth. Hunt in 181 8 wrote 
of Moore as "among the poets who were bred up in the French 
school." 

Henry Luttrell, whose verse, according to Moore, "was, like 
everything Luttrell ever did, full of polish and point," composed 
his "Advice to Julia" and "Letter to Julia" in octosyllabic couplets, 
a joint product of Butler and Prior. He recognizes frankly that his 
poetry is the child of his London environment. 

Here frown, 'tis true, no hills gigantic, 
Of towering height and shapes romantic. 

The Lake does not 

reflect the form 
Of some rude castle, seat sublime 
Of war, and violence, and crime. . . . 

[ 136 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

In short, Hyde-Park is not the Highlands. 
But, though ungraced with one of these. 
Still we have lawns, and paths, and trees. 
Why should our landscape blush for shame? 
'Tis fresh and gay, if flat and tame. 
None view it awe-struck or surprised ; 
But still, 'tis smart and civilized. 

All of which is no bad description of Luttrell's gracefully mediocre 
verse. His Julia is a modern Belinda, his mood that of "The Rape 
of the Lock"; and if he wrote like the Augustans, it was because 
he lived and talked like them. Milman, after breakfasting at 
Rogers's in 1834, spoke of "Luttrell's finely pointed sentences." 
Of Byron's poems in which he saw fit to 

venture o'er 
The path which Pope and Gifford trod before, 

"The Age of Bronze" was written after he left England, and the 
others between 1808 and 181 2. "The Waltz" was the only one pub- 
lished in England during the four years of Byron's London popu- 
larity, though a pirated edition of "The Curse of Minerva" came 
out in Philadelphia in 181 5. Aside from "English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers" none of them had genuine merit; but that Byron 
should have composed over three thousand lines of satire in the 
neo-classic couplet is a striking index of his literary faith. On his 
return from the Mediterranean he was eager to print his "Hints 
from Horace" instead of "Childe Harold," such was his confidence 
in the magic of the old-time metre. In "English Bards" the dried-up 
mummy of the Queen Anne tradition became for an hour alive, 
took on a real likeness to the great though narrow genius that it so 
often had travestied. 

Oh pen perverted! paper misapplied! 
Had Cottle still adorned the counter's side, 
Bent o'er the desk, or, bom to useful toils, 
Been taught to make the paper which he soils. 
Ploughed, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb, 
He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him, 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Even Byron's two wildly romantic tales, "Lara" and "The Corsair," 
are metrically modeled on Crabbe, and have many separate lines 
reminiscent of Pope's compression and antithesis: 

Consign their souls to man's eternal foe, 

And seal their own to spare some wanton's woe; 

or 

And they that smote for freedom or for sway. 
Deemed few were slain, while more remained to slay. 

The influence of Rogers, both as an acquaintance and as a popular 
poet, must have helped considerably this neo-classic tendency. 
Byron greatly overrated him. Moore believed him something of an 
arbiter elegantiarum and wrote: "Rogers' criticisms have twice 
upset all I have done." Another man whose influence must not be 
forgotten was Gifford, after 1809 the editor of The Quarterly 
Review. He could hardly be called a member of the social group now 
under consideration, but he was often in contact with them and com- 
manded their respect as a critic. He was a militant neo-classicist, 
more confirmed than Rogers, who after all, like Pope himself, was 
rather catholic in taste and upheld the couplet simply because it was 
peculiarly adapted to his own moods and natural gifts. Byron when 
in Europe had Gifford choose between different readings in his MSS. 
or make other changes, and tells us: "I always regarded him as my 
literary father, and myself as his prodigal son." 

Even among the London society poets, however, these Queen 
Anne imitations were a very insignificant part of the poetry written. 
Yet before we turn to the rest we must remember that most of this 
also is far from great. Whether Wordsworth was right for all time 
or not, he was right for his own age and Byron was wrong as to the 
poetical influences of country and town. Luttrell and Spencer were 
very minor figures. Moore, Campbell, and Rogers were all hailed 
in their own day as poets of the first rank, for, being more closely 
in contact with the public than Wordsworth and Blake, they knew 
better what it wanted; but now the glory of all three is departed. 
More than that, some of the best work of Campbell had been written 
before his London life, "The Pleasures of Hope" in Scotland, the 

[ 138 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

noble "Mariners of England" in Germany. What endures best of 
Moore's work is neither his vers de sociite nor his popular Oriental 
romances, but the part which owed least to his London environment 
and most to his Celtic heritage, "The Irish Melodies." Even the 
poetry produced by Byron during this period becomes on analysis 
woefully unsatisfactory. Because he was both a great and a popular 
writer the world has believed that his greatness and his popularity 
went hand in hand, a belief that hardly squares with the facts. 
Before 1816 he was an astoundingly popular second-rate poet. After 
181 6 he was a great world genius with dwindling applause. It is an 
impressive fact that this gifted Englishman wrote almost none of his 
best poetry on British soil. "There's not a joy the world can give," 
the "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte," and the best of the "Hebrew 
Melodies" are practically all that our age much cares for, save two 
or three lyrics written after the rupture with his wife and on the 
very eve of his departure. All of "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," 
"Beppo," "The Vision of Judgment," "The Dream," "The Epistle 
to Augusta," "Darkness," all the dramas, both good and bad, "The 
Prisoner of Chillon," "Mazeppa," were composed on the continent. 
Of the extracts from Byron in Ward's "English Poets," only about 
one-seventh were written before the scandal of 181 6. 

There is another fact closely related to this general mediocrity. 
Wordsworth's return to nature, Scott's return to feudalism, grew 
out of emotions that had been deeply felt from boyhood. Hogg, 
despite all his faults, wrote of stories that he had lived with as a 
child. About the "romantic" elements in the work of the London 
society poets there is frequently a made-to-order atmosphere. We 
feel too often that they wrote with their ears open for the applause 
or hisses of the audience. We detect the rouge on their odalisques 
and the false beards on their druids. Spencer in 1796 translated 
Burger's "Lenore," it being the fashion that year to translate that 
poem. By 1802 German melodrama was unpopular, so he wrote his 
"Urania" ridiculing it. Rogers's "Columbus" pictures the great dis- 
coverer sailing over mystic seas aided by angels and opposed by 
demons, the whole forming a monstrous compound of "The Ancient 
Mariner" and "The Rape of the Lock." There are admirable pas- 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

sages in Campbell's "Gertrude of Wyoming," and in the Oriental 
romances of Byron and Moore; but who can feel that as wholes 
they ring true? In these works the authors became romantic poets, 
not because nature made them so, but because the popular demand 
made them so. 

Such efforts were not wholly in vain, however; and in the Scotch 
poems of Campbell and the Irish poems of Moore there is often a 
nobler note. In Moore both the Pope imitations and the sham 
Orientalism of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels" were 
half-hearted responses to currents of taste among his associates. 
"Tell Kate she must leave her Boileau to me in her will," he wrote 
to his mother in 1812 ; but though his head was neo-classic, his heart 
was Irish. The Celtic strain in him may be adulterated and artificial- 
ized; but there is enough of the genuine mood to make parts of the 
"Irish Melodies" great poetry. How could we expect compelling sin- 
cerity in narrative verse or satire from the man who wrote: 
"Music, — the only art for which, in my own opinion, I was born with 
a real natural love; my poetry, such as it is, having sprung out of 
my deep feeling for music." In "The Irish Melodies" there are 
many notes, one of the best of them that of romantic medievalism. 
Almost in the year when he printed the satirical couplets of "Intol- 
erance" he was singing of Brian the Brave, killed at Clontarf in the 
eleventh century, and of the lady who walked uninsulted through 
his kingdom, though 

Rich and rare were the gems she wore. 
In Ossianic dirge he tells us. 

No more to chiefs and ladies bright 
The harp of Tara swells. 

On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays, 

When the clear cold eve's declining, 
He sees the round towers of other days 

In the wave beneath him shining. 

We have the song of Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, who "was, by 
some supernatural power, transformed into a swan, and condemned 

[ 140 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

to wander, for many hundred years, over certain lakes and rivers 
in Ireland, till the coming of Christianity"; the song of the ancient 
O'Ruark; and medieval legends of St. Senanus and St. Kevin. 
O'Donohue's mistress waits to see her unearthly chieftain ride his 
white horse out of the blue depths of the Killarney lakes, and the 
young poet by the coast of Arranmore to see "Hy Brysail or the 
Enchanted Island, the Paradise of the Pagan Irish." Then there are 
patriotic poems of modern times, such as that on Emmet: 

Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade, 
Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid; 

earnest love songs, such as 

Go where glory waits thee. 
But while fame elates thee. 
Oh! still remember me; 

and lyrics in more playful vein, such as "The time I've lost in woo- 
ing." It may be that when we compare all this with Burns we feel 
the effect of Moore's "boudoir education"; it may be that his Irish 
patriotism loved the sound of the harp better than that of the bullet; 
but the great musician is heard in his lyrics even if the great man 
is not, and the witchery of song is there. 

Campbell, unlike Moore, was genuine in both his neo-classicism 
and his ultra-romanticism. For the student of literary currents he 
presents a marked dualism in taste and creative work; and the roots 
of this dualism can be traced in his early life. As in the case of his 
great fellow Scotchman, many injfluences of ancestry and tradition 
inclined him toward the medieval-romantic. He was lineally de- 
scended from the first Norman lord of Lochawe. His mother was 
intimately acquainted with the traditional songs of the Highlands, 
especially Argyllshire. Beattie tells us that "the ballad poetry of 
Scotland was familiar to his ear, long before he could comprehend 
its meaning." In youth he was an admirer of "Ossian," and wrote an 
Ossianic poem, "Morven and Fillan." At the age of seventeen he 
spent some time among the romantic Hebrides, and before going 
there was, according to Beattie, "already familiar with their feudal 

[ 141 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

history and poetic legends." Here Campbell wrote: "The Point of 
Callioch commands a magnificent prospect of thirteen Hebrid- 
islands, among which are Staffa and Icolmkill, which I visited with 
enthusiasm." Yet there were distinct counteracting influences. Of 
his father, whom he resembled, the son wrote: 

His soul's proud instinct sought not to enjoy 
Romantic fictions, like a minstrel boy. 

The first poets with whom young Campbell became familiar in Eng- 
lish were Pope, Gray, and Goldsmith, whose influence can be clearly 
traced in his own work. At the university he was "the Pope of 
Glasgow," and Horace was his favorite lyrist. The two streams 
mingle in some of his early poetry, where the most romantic nature 
worship is voiced in the time-worn couplet. At Mull in 1795, with 
his eye on the object, he described 

The dark blue rocks, in barren grandeur piled; 
The cuckoo, sighing to the pensive wild. 

At the age of twenty he wrote: 

I loved to trace the wave-worn shore, and view 
Romantic Nature in her wildest hue. 
There, as I linger'd on the vaulted steep, 
lona's towers toll'd mournful o'er the deep; 
Till all my bosom owned a sacred mood, 
And blessed the wild delight of solitude. 

In the very year which produced the half neo-classic "Pleasures 
of Hope" he planned a medieval poem on William Tell, which was 
never published. Three years before "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" 
was printed, he felt the medieval thrill of Melrose Abbey. Is it any 
wonder that the fellow countryman of Scott and the London asso- 
ciate of Rogers should be at once the leading defender of Pope in 
1819 and the poet of "Invincible romantic Scotia's shore"? 

The highly romantic nature and perhaps also the poetic merit 
of Campbell's medieval poems have been too little noticed. "O'Con- 
nor's Child" and "Reullura" introduce the ancient Innisfail and 
"the dark-attired Culdee" of our recent Celtic revival. The wizard 

[ 142 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

who warns Lochiel is of the same type as Brian in "The Lady of 
the Lake." "Glenara" deals with the same story as Joanna Baillie's 
"Family Legend"; "Earl March looked on his dying child" with 
the same tradition as Scott's "Maid of Neidpath"; "The Brave 
Roland" with that of Schiller's "Knight of Toggenburg." The 
German medieval strain occurs also in "The Ritter Ban." 

Luttrell produced nothing of merit in any romantic vein; Spencer 
only two short poems, his version of "Lenore" and his pathetic 
medieval ballad of "Beth-Gelert." Rogers's "Jacqueline," written in 
Scott's metre and located in the France of Louis Le Grand, is as 
near to the medieval-romantic as Rogers ever came successfully, but 
not very near. Like much of that author's work it has a considerable 
degree of negative charm. 

True lovers of Byron will prefer to think of him as the great 
lonely misanthrope of later years; the student of public psychology 
is attracted to his early career as that of a popular phenomenon in 
literary history. From 1812 to at least 181 8 Scott was dethroned; 
and the supremacy of Byron not only in number of readers but also 
in critical applause was unquestioned. Immediately upon pub- 
lication ten thousand copies of "The Corsair" were sold, almost as 
many as were marketed of Scott's "Lord of the Isles" in a decade 
and a half, more than would be sold in a century of a separately 
printed "Excursion." Yet these three poems encountered the same 
public, "The Excursion" appearing in the same year as "The Cor- 
sair," and "The Lord of the Isles" a few months later. 

As compared with his predecessor on the popular throne, Byron 
showed both likenesses and differences. Like Scott he was virile 
and vigorous, yet with an occasional sauce of sentimentality; like 
Scott he brought in a wealth of picturesque new details without 
making too exacting demands on his reader's power to think; the 
narratives of both, though not always well constructed, moved with 
rapidity and spirit. In some or all of these respects both differed 
markedly from the great unpopular poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Keats, and Shelley. Byron's was the reign of Orientalism, Scott's 
that of medievalism; but both types appealed to the same traits 
in the general reader, the love of novelty, adventure, and local color. 

[ 143 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Byron himself felt this. "I shall never forget," he wrote, "the singu- 
lar scene on entering Tepaleen [in Albania] at five in the afternoon, 
as the sun was going down. It brought to my mind (with some 
change of dress, however) Scott's description of Branksome Castle 
in his 'Lay,' and the feudal system." In 1813 he wrote to Moore, 
in words that may have helped to produce "Lalla Rookh": "Stick 
to the East; — the oracle, Stael, told me it was the only poetical 
policy. The North, South, and West have all been exhausted; but 
from the East we have nothing but Southey's unsaleables." Scott no 
doubt wrote from longer and deeper experience in describing the 
wars of his own countrymen and ancestors; yet he also in the 
Waverley novels turned to other countries and even to the East 
when he felt that his public was growing tired of Scotland. In all 
these respects "The Bride of Abydos" and "The Corsair" were the 
logical successors of "Marmion." 

The fundamental difference was that the poetry of Scott was 
wholesome and colored by reason, that of Byron morbid and colored 
by passion. Carlyle divided all romantic writing into Goetzism and 
Wertherism, the literature of medieval adventure and the literature 
of melancholy subjectivity. As Scott's popular reign had been that 
of Goetzism, so Byron's was that of Wertherism. It is easy to see 
how this should have a wide appeal. In Germany "The Sorrows 
of Werther" had chimed in so well with the mood of the rising 
generation that melancholy and suicide became favorite recreations 
of young gentlemen. Everybody read it. When Richter wishes to 
emphasize Fraulein Thienette's utter ignorance of books, he tells 
us that "in literature she does not even know Werther." That was 
equivalent to a dozen exclamation points. Byron's heroes do not 
commit suicide, that final step being more in harmony with German 
thoroughness than with Anglo-Saxon practicality; but they have 
the same "pale cast of thought" and unhappy love affairs. The 
Giaour, like Werther, has his life blasted by his hopeless affection 
for another man's wife; Selim by his hopeless attachment to another 
man's fiancee; and Conrad (who is probably the same as Lara) 
having lost his own love by tuberculosis, devotes the rest of his life 
to melancholy and adultery. It seems hardly fair to give such a 

[ 144 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

summary of poems which contain many admirable passages; but, 
though the flowers of poetry are there, they are certainly twined 
on a very rotten trellis. What is bad, however, probably helped the 
sale as much as what is good. Byron was the first great narrative 
poet in a century to make sex passion a leading motif; with the 
exception of Burns and Moore, almost the only great poet during 
that time to handle it in any form more vivid than stereot3q3ed 
verses of compliment. The love affairs of Scott's poems are obviously 
dragged in with great reluctance and almost painfully calm and 
respectable. For us, who have grown sated even with Swinburne's 
"Laus Veneris" and the revived Elizabethan dramatists, it is hard 
to realize how much novelty this element had in "The Giaour" and 
its fellows. 

The cold in clime are cold in blood. 

Their love can scarce deserve the name; 

But mine was like a lava flood 

That boils in -Etna's breast of flame. . . . 

I knew but to obtain or die. 

I die — but first I have possess'd. 

And come what may, I have been blest. 

We suspect that Byron had a larger percentage of women among 
his readers than Scott. 

There is, however, another element in these early poems which 
appears to have made an equally far-reaching and much nobler 
appeal. We meet it continually in the first two cantos of "Childe 
Harold" and fitfully in the "Oriental Tales." It is a feeling for the 
romance of geography and history, a realization that earth is wide 
and old, crowded with wonders, opportunities, and memories. All 
this had been kindled into genuine fire by the poet's travels, and 
weakened but not destroyed by his subsequent life in London. 

Oh! yet — for there my steps have been: 
These feet have press'd the sacred shore, 

he cries of the Troad in one of the few good passages in "Abydos." 
The death agony of the Giaour smacks of melodrama, but not the 
death agony of Greece at the beginning of the same poem. Would 

[ 145 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

not any of us give all the fighting and love-making in "The Corsair" 
for the noble lines that open the third canto, when 

On old Aegina's rock and Idra's isle 
The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; 
O'er his own regions lingering, loves to shine, 
Though there his altars are no more divine? 

Modern realists feel no interest whatever in that English Werther 
known as "Childe Harold," but a great deal in the battlefields and 
bullfights of Spain by which he leads us. Still more on Hellenic soil 
he makes us realize that 

Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground. 

Madame Girardin, after reading the Spanish travels of Gautier 
asked him, "But Theo, are there no Spaniards in Spain?" One could 
wish that there had been no Turks in Byron's Turkey and no Greeks 
for him in Greece, so far is his poetry of description and association 
above the crude melodrama of his early heroes and heroines. The 
books of travel that were poured out during the late eighteenth and 
early nineteenth century were legion in number. The English people, 
shut in with their own thoughts so long through the eighteenth cen- 
tury, veritably hungered and thirsted after the new and remote; and 
that spirit not only helped to make "Childe Harold" but also helped 
to make its audience after it was printed. 

When the popular dictatorship passed from "Rokeby" to "Childe 
Harold" it was not wholly a transfer of power from the Scotch to 
the southern spirit. Byron's father was English, but his mother a 
Highlander; and his early boyhood had been passed at Aberdeen 
between the mountains and the sea. His romantic narratives have 
often the lowland love of dare-devil adventure so common in Hogg, 
Leyden, and Scott, so rare in Keats, Coleridge, and Shelley. A touch 
of Celtic Highland blood, the blood of "Ossian," may have encour- 
aged the Wertherism in him. He declares in "Don Juan": 

I am half a Scot by birth, and bred 
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head, — 
[ 146 ] 



THE LONDON SOCIETY POETS 

As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all, 
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and 
clear streams. 

The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall, 

All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams. . . . 

I "scotch'd not kill'd" the Scotchman in my blood, 
And love the land of "mountain and of flood." 

After the departure of Byron in 1816 our interest in the London 
society poets begins to wane. Moore's "Lalla Rookh" was already 
in the works, and came out the next year. Henceforward this little 
fellowship of writers produced nothing which even in the judgment 
of its own age was supremely good. Moore turned out clever society 
verse, and his flabby "Loves of the Angels," which sold on the 
strength of his former reputation; Rogers his "Italy," which, 
though not bad poetry, sold on the strength of its magnificent bind- 
ings rather than its merits. In "Lalla Rookh" the Orientalism of 
Byron continued its popular reign. Though the poem has more good 
passages than our own age seems willing to admit, unquestionably 
much of its rich carving is only stucco. Nevertheless, such as it was, 
seven editions of it were called for within a year, and Longman over 
twenty years later thought it "the cream of the copyrights." Among 
other languages it was very soon translated into Persian; and a 
German version was made by the romantic novelist Fouque, the 
author of "Undine." The Prince Royal of Prussia wrote that he 
always slept with a copy of it under his pillow. Meanwhile Keats 
and Shelley were beginning to publish, to the detriment of both 
pocketbook and mental tranquillity. 

We cannot pass over the latter years of this group without a 
word concerning their connection with the American author Wash- 
ington Irving. He came to England in 181 5, and from then until 
1 81 8 lived mainly at Liverpool, after that either in London or on 
the continent at places frequented by English writers. Soon after 
landing he formed a cordial friendship with Campbell, whose 
brother had been his friend in America. In 1820 he met Moore in 
France. Before long the two authors were on such an affectionate 

[ 147 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

footing that Irving wrote: "Scarce a day passes without our seeing 
each other"; and some months later Moore introduced him to the 
Hollands, with whom thereafter he frequently dined. In 1822 at 
Lady Spencer's he first met Rogers, and often afterward break- 
fasted with him. He knew W. R. Spencer and apparently Luttrell, 
who was reported to him as "warm in your praises." With the excep- 
tion of Scott, all English authors who were intimate friends of his 
belonged to the London society poets. In this fact there is nothing 
remarkable. They were the only poets who combined geographical 
propinquity to Irving with an unquestioned reputation. It is worth 
noting, however, that that same dualism of style which characterizes 
the poetry of these writers is found in Irving's prose of this period, 
for as they imitated Pope, so he imitated Addison; and as they 
alternated or mixed the early eighteenth-century manner with the 
supernatural and romantic, so did he. There would seem to have 
been a natural affinity of tastes, which aided in drawing them 
together. 

The London society poets were all exceedingly popular, with the 
exception of Scott and Crabbe the only consistently popular poets 
of the romantic generation. That feeling of sympathy with the 
public trend of thought, which conduces so much to popularity — a 
feeling so glaringly absent in Wordsworth and Blake — may have 
aided in drawing them to the metropolis. They lived in an age very 
different from that of Pope; in many ways they wrote very differ- 
ently; yet more than we have realized, the wits of Queen Anne were 
akin to those later wits of Holland House and of Rogers' breakfast 
table. 



[ 148 ] 



PART II 

ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE DOWNFALL OF 
NAPOLEON TO THE RISE OF TENNYSON 

(1816-1830) 



CHAPTER VII 

The Scotch Era of Prose y 1 8 1 4- 1 8 3 o 

From 1795 to 1814 Caledonian literature had been almost wholly 
poetry, even the erudition of Leyden and Scott venting itself in the 
editing and annotation of verse, rather than in separate treatises. 
Any leanings toward prose on the part of authors north of the Tweed 
were promptly discouraged by publishers, who evidently knew their 
public. Scott in 18 10 was frightened by Ballantyne into abandoning 
his unfinished fragment of "Waverley"; Gait's "Annals of the 
Parish" was rejected by Constable with the remark that "Scottish 
novels would not do"; and Susan Ferrier's "Marriage," planned in 
1 810, was not published until eight years later. 

After 1 8 14 the significant achievements of both major and minor 
northern writers were in prose. Such poems as did appear, with 
the exception of Lockhart's renderings from the Spanish, were weak, 
belated survivals of tendencies already moribund. Scott's "Harold 
the Dauntless," in which the sun of "Marmion" went down forever, 
had been mainly composed long before publication; Hogg's inter- 
minable "Queen Hynde" should not have been composed at all. 
"Waverley," "Marriage," and "The Annals of the Parish" were 
drawn from the dusty slumber of years and found an eager public 
loudly calling for successors. 

One chief cause for this revival of prose was obviously the triumph 
of the Waverley novels, which led the way and made every pub- 
lisher hope to find a new Scott among his young prose contributors. 
Another reason was that the Scotch vein of modern poetry — so 
much more narrow, so much less varied and Protean than the Eng- 
lish — was worn out; and the northern writers must now utter prose 
or nothing. The influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge, which was 
leavening so much poetry south of the Tweed, counted for nothing 

[ 151 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

beyond that river. Even the praise of John Wilson could not make 
his countrymen respond. In 1818, according to Blackwood's, the 
poems of Wordsworth, though highly regarded by the English, were 
known to the Scotch only through extracts and reviews; and as for 
the verses of Coleridge, "the reading public of Scotland are in gen- 
eral ignorant that any such poems exist." Also the whole British 
public after 181 8 began to be sated with their long banquet of 
poetry; and the departure from verse, though much more marked 
in Edinburgh than in London, was symptomatic of growing tenden- 
cies in both countries. 

The Scotch flood of prose divides into three closely related cur- 
rents: that of the Waverley novels; that of Blackwood's Magazine; 
and that of the minor novelists. The writers involved were generally 
in personal contact with each other; common elements as well as 
divergencies can be found in their writings; and they may be con- 
sidered as forming together a fairly distinct literary eddy. 

Scott led the way with his novels; and unquestionably much of 
the work produced by minors around him was the backwash from 
that great main flood. The swarming crowd of his imitators had 
temporarily frightened him away from remote ages without destroy- 
ing in him that love for an antique atmosphere which was part of 
his being. So from 1814 to 1819 come novels which are located in 
comparatively modern times, but over which the spirit of a remote 
past hangs often like a transforming haze. It was precisely this 
quality which James Ballantyne criticised in "Waverley": "Con- 
sidering that 'sixty years since' only leads us back to the year 1750, 
a period when our fathers were alive and merry, it seems to me that 
the air of antiquity diffused over the character is rather too great 
to harmonize with the time." But the "air of antiquity" was pre- 
cisely what Scott did not desire to give up; in the year when 
"Waverley" was printed he published his "Essay on Chivalry." 
The same spell from antiquity — or from Ann Radcliffe — hangs over 
the eighteenth-century events of "Guy Mannering." 

The roar of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which 
began to make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a 

[ 152 ] 



THE SCOTCH ERA OF PROSE 

ruined mansion of considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it 

with a disconsolate sensation. 

"Why, my little fellow," he said, "this is a ruin, not a house." 

"Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that's Elangowan Auld Place. 

There's a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared, I never saw ony 

mysell, and we're just at the door o' the New Place." 

This atmosphere appears often in even the most realistic of Scott's 
early novels. "The Antiquary" is "near the end of the eighteenth 
century," "The Black Dwarf" at the beginning of it, "Old Mortality" 
at the close of the seventeenth. "Rob Roy," like "The Black Dwarf," 
is "early in the eighteenth century." "The Heart of Midlothian" 
begins with the Porteus riot of 1737. The unfortunate original for 
the bride of Lammermoor died in 1669; the events of "A Legend 
of Montrose" occurred about twenty years farther back. No one of 
these early novels antedated the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. 
Yet in every one, either intermittently or consistently, occurs the 
glamour of antiquarian romance or Gothic mystery and decay. 
Men dig for treasure in moonlit ruins, and find it at last under 
a tomb of the twelfth century. The Black Dwarf moves in the 
shadowy background of his story as mysteriously as Schedoni in 
Mrs. Radcliffe's "Italian." It is not for nothing that the forty-second 
chapter of "Old Mortality" is prefaced by a quotation from 
Spenser. Something of his medieval atmosphere, of terrors more 
than human, hangs around the outlawed Burley, haunted by his 
guilty conscience in his lonely cavern, where "His figure, dimly 
ruddied by the light of the red charcoal, seemed that of a fiend in 
the lurid atmosphere of Pandemonium." Feudalism, adventure, and 
the misty mountains that had nursed the Ossianic poems of Mac- 
pherson, play their part in "Rob Roy," and "A Legend of Mont- 
rose." Jeanie Deans is the captive of robbers, and a whiff from the 
dungeons of Ann Radcliffe breathes often from the lips of the de- 
mented Madge Wildfire: "I may weel say that I am come out of 
the City of Destruction, for my mother is Mrs. Bat's-eyes, that 
dwells at Deadman's Corner." Wolf's Crag in "The Bride of Lam- 
mermoor" is like a medieval ruin on the Rhine, and the dying image 
of feudalism seems personified in the last lord of "the Ravenswood 

[ 153 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

family, whose ancient grandeur and portentous authority, credulity 
had graced with so many superstitious attributes." 

The spread and degradation of medievalism not only led Scott 
to disguise, and in part suppress, his own enthusiasm for it during 
the half decade discussed; but it also made him mine extensively 
for three or four years another vein — equally Scotch, equally 
national, worked before by Allan Ramsay and Burns and many a 
minor north of the Tweed — the vein of broad humorous or tren- 
chant realism. Lockhart justly pointed out that "The Antiquary" 
is "in all its humbler and softer scenes, the transcript of actual 
Scottish life, as observed by the man himself." So is the touching 
story of Jeanie Deans founded on fact. After 1818, however, this 
element, though fitfully revived, becomes much more rare. With 
the publication of Susan Ferrier's "Marriage" in that year began 
an inundation of minor Scotch novels, mainly harshly or humor- 
ously realistic, which probably made Scott feel crowded by his 
imitators out of the field of realism as he had previously been 
crowded by them out of the field of martial antiquity. Like many 
another popular author, he made his life a series of doublings and 
twists to avoid the pursuing hounds that his own popularity had 
summoned. 

Hence in 1819, in "Ivanhoe," he swung back to the Middle Ages 
of his early love, but to a past that was foreign instead of Scotch. 
"Am glad you find anything to entertain you in 'Ivanhoe,' " wrote 
the author to Lady Louisa Stuart. "Novelty is what this giddy-paced 
time demands imperiously, and I certainly studied as much as I 
could to get out of the old beaten track, leaving those who like to 
keep the road, which I have rutted pretty well." Scott returned to 
modern life temporarily in "St. Ronan's Well" and to a not very 
remote epoch in two or three other cases; but the dominant note 
through the Waverley novels from now on was that of antiquity, 
no longer the past of a single country but the past of Europe. "The 
Abbot" is in Scotland, "The Betrothed" on the edge of Wales, 
"Ivanhoe" in England, "Quentin Durward" in France; "Anne of 
Geierstein" leads into Switzerland, "Count Robert" to Byzantium, 
and "The Talisman" to Palestine. Eyes flash fire through visored 

[ 154 ] 



THE SCOTCH ERA OF PROSE 

helmets; fair ladies lean from Gothic balconies to fasten letters on 
their lovers' lances; young maidens wander disguised as pilgrims; 
and the Norman spear encounters the Welsh club under the battle- 
ments of a border castle. This continual handling of periods remote 
and vaguely known could not help but have a devitalizing effect on 
the author's work. Antaeus was deliberately putting himself on 
stilts. Most of the later novels, "The Betrothed," "Anne of Geier- 
stein," "Count Robert of Paris," and "Castle Dangerous," show 
the lack of bracing contact with mother earth, and are full of con- 
ventionalized pseudo-romance, dangerously akin, at its worst, to 
that of Letitia Landon. "The Talisman," the last true masterpiece, 
was written immediately following the death of Byron; after that 
for both Scott and Great Britain the twilight of pseudo-romanticism 
gathered fast. 

Considered as permanent literature, the Waverley novels easily 
overshadow all other Scottish prose of their time. In many ways 
also they were independent of that prose; where suggestions are 
borrowed the minor is almost always the borrower. Yet great and 
small writer alike grew out of a common environment. Even to-day, 
says Mrs. Oliphant, "Edinburgh preserves a very distinct stamp of 
her own; but in those days she was as individual and distinct as 
Paris or Vienna." It was one of Lockhart's amusements to "bring 
these Southerners into close communication with a set of your 
Northern lights . . . make them discuss the differences between 
England and Scotland in various points of manners, feelings, educa- 
tion, etc." Constable, the publisher of Scott, had given northern 
literature a marked impetus by his financial encouragement. "Ten, 
even twenty guineas a sheet for a review," says Lord Cockburn, 
"£2000 or £3000 for a single poem, and £1000 for two philosophical 
dissertations, drew authors out of their dens, and made Edinburgh 
a literary mart famous with strangers, and the pride of its own 
citizens." 

It was in an atmosphere like this that Blackwood's Magazine had 
birth in 181 7. Though it later took on a cosmopolitan character, it 
was originally Scotch in parentage and temper. It and The Edin- 
burgh Review, says Mrs. Oliphant, "were both Berserkers, wild 

[ 155 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

riders of the North, incautious, daring, irresponsible," as contrasted 
with the harsh but eminently respectable Quarterly at London. Like 
a genuine moss-trooper Blackwood' s pricked hard and fast at all 
its literary enemies, and in dealing with those whom it liked was as 
reluctant to spoil good sport as Sir Lucius O'Trigger. "Though 
averse to being cut up myself, I like to abuse my friends," wrote 
Wilson in a typical mood. Even Scott was once attacked, apparently 
in a spirit of sheer bravado, by those who must have been his ad- 
mirers. Maginn wrote to Blackwood in the same militant temper, 
"In London you are blamed for attacking obscure Londoners, most 
particularly Hazlitt. He is really too insignificant an animal." 

Yet this side of Maga, so obvious, so often dwelt on, is not the 
only important one. She meant to be, and in many ways she was, 
not the enemy but the friend of authors. With the exception of The 
London Magazine, no other periodical contained a greater wealth 
of literary matter. Its reviews, though at times monumental mis- 
judgments, are on the whole less unrighteous than one might think. 
We hear much about its venomous attacks on Keats, who did not 
deserve them, and on Leigh Hunt and Cornelius Webb — who did. 
Why do we not hear as often of Blackwood's as the first influential 
champion for Wordsworth, as often of "the long and triumphant 
battle which Maga has fought in defence of that gentleman's char- 
acter and genius"? If it maligned Shelley after he had become 
associated with the "Cockneys," it was the one great magazine which 
before that had amply recognized his powers. If it dealt roughly with 
Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria," it had generous reviews for him 
later. It spoke with justice and discernment of Milman and Procter, 
of Crabbe, and of Byron's "Don Juan." All this is different enough 
from the well-bred indifference of Murray, who wrote to the editors: 
"You have unfortunately too much of the Lake School, for which 
no interest is felt here." 

Besides reviews and political articles, Blackwood's published a 
number of poems and novels of some merit, as well as papers on the 
literature of Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia. Its two chief monu- 
ments, however, are the "Tales from Blackwood" and the "Noctes 
Ambrosianae." Most of the "Tales" appeared in two annual waves, 

[ 156 ] 



THE SCOTCH ERA OF PROSE 

the first in 182 1, the second in 1829, with a few scattering between. 
Without being great, they are ingenious and readable, and a useful 
index as to popular taste. Gothic mystery and terror brood over 
nearly all. Some are tales of the sea. The Flying Dutchman sends 
his last message home. A tragedy of jealousy and murder takes place 
on a floating beacon. A disabled ship hangs for hours at anchor over 
transparent water in which dozens of her dead, who have just had 
sea burial, can be clearly seen. "A large block happened to fall over- 
board, and the agitation which it occasioned in the sea produced an 
apparent augmentation of their number, and a horrible distortion 
of their limbs and countenances." A negro pirate captain is a noble 
villain, a link between Byron's Conrad and Hugo's Bug-Jargal. 
"An Adventure in the Northwest Territory" invades the "forest 
primeval" of Chateaubriand. There are two stories which may have 
furnished suggestion to the gloomy ingenuity of Poe, one in which 
a man is imprisoned under a gigantic swinging bell, another in which 
a victim is crushed by a gradually contracting dungeon. The Italian 
current is represented by "Di Vasari" and "Colonna the Painter." 
In the former the lover of another man's wife is imprisoned and left 
to die in her chamber, as in Balzac's "Grande Breteche," only by 
the wife's act instead of the husband's. The latter is a story of love, 
revenge, and art enthusiasm deciphered from a worm-eaten manu- 
script of the Radcliffe type. The doppelgdngerei of the German 
Romantiker is imported in other stories, in one of which two students 
at Gottingen exchange bodies, with the result that the hero barely 
escapes being buried alive, and identities become as confused as in 
Hoffmann's "Devil's Elixir" or Gautier's "Avatar." "The Heads- 
man" uses the old superstition that an executioner's axe clinks when 
its destined victim goes by, a belief which plays an important part 
in "Fair Annerl," the masterpiece of the German Romanticist Bren- 
tano. In some ways these "Tales" are distinctly Scotch, in others 
they represent the converging of various international currents. 

From 1825 on John Wilson enriched the pages of Maga with his 
"Noctes." They have all the vitality which is life, and all the form- 
lessness which is not art. One must wander in them as he would in 
a meadow, browsing where he feels inclined. In these symposia 

[ 157 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Christopher North (Wilson himself), the Ettrick Shepherd, and 
other characters real or imaginary, wake at random, as the whim 
leads them, the strings of humor or pathos, poetry or abuse. "The 
South Briton," says Professor Elton, "until he has read a few of 
the 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' has no notion of what old Scottish con- 
vivial eloquence can be, when in full spate." Wilson's half-extempo- 
raneous dialogues recall the words of his fellow countryman Steven- 
son: "Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large surface 
of life, rather than dig mines into geological strata. Masses of expe- 
rience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical in- 
stances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and 
in upon the matter in hand from every point of the compass, and 
from every degree of mental elevation and abasement — these are 
the material with which talk is fortified." 

Socially, the Blackwood's group was the heart of the prose eddy 
in Scotland. They were connected on one side with the renowned 
Sir Walter, on the other with the minor novelists, nearly all of whom 
were among their contributors. The original leaders were William 
Blackwood himself, James Hogg, Lockhart, and John Wilson (the 
friend of Wordsworth), who had now been driven by financial 
reverses to Edinburgh and industry. William Blackwood's friendly 
attitude toward the author of "Waverley" was not always recipro- 
cated by the great novelist; but Hogg and Wilson were the friends 
of Scott, and his faithful retainer Laidlaw was an occasional con- 
tributor, as was his grateful though wayward protege R. P. Gillies. 
The chief bond, however, between Scott and Blackwood's was in the 
person of Lockhart, who met the arch romancer one year after the 
founding of the magazine, and became his son-in-law in 1820, 

It is a vivid picture of group activity that Mrs. Oliphant gives in 
describing the editorial headquarters of Maga: "One can imagine 
the bustle and the commotion in the rooms in Princes Street, the 
endless consultations, the wild suggestions: Lockhart, pensive and 
serious, almost melancholy, in the fiery fever of satire and ridicule 
that possessed him, launching his javelin with a certain pleasure 
in the mischief as well as the most perfect self-abandonment to the 
impulse of the moment; Wilson, with Homeric roars of laughter, 

[ 158 ] 



THE SCOTCH ERA OF PROSE 

and a recklessness still less under control, not caring whom he 
attacked nor with what bitterness, apparently unconscious of the 
sting till it was inflicted, when he collapsed into ineffectual peni- 
tence; Hogg bustling in, all flushed and heated with a new idea, in 
which the rustic daffing of the countryside gave a rougher force to 
the keen shafts of the gentlemen. That it must be a strong number, 
something to startle the world, a sort of fiery meteor to blaze across 
the Edinburgh sky and call every man's attention, was the first 
necessity." 

In 1 82 1 William Maginn, an Irishman who had already sent some 
contributions from Cork, came to Edinburgh and joined the band. 
"Bright broken Maginn!" His wit and thirst were great, his wisdom 
and will power small; and if he added to the brilliancy of Black- 
wood's he hardly reflected dignity upon it. Thackeray has given a 
picture of all that he was and failed to be in the character of Captain 
Shandon. A few years later a more tragic wreck, De Quincey, became 
a contributor to Maga and wandered to Edinburgh to end his days 
there, having been first introduced to the magazine by Wilson, his 
old friend of the Lakes. On many more occasional contributors there 
is no need of dwelling. 

It is not easy to draw a sharp distinction between the literary 
output of Blackwood's and that of the minor novelists. Most of 
them were contributors to Maga, and several novels which were 
eventually printed separately first appeared in its pages. In general 
they represent either the Gothic mystery or the broad realism of 
Scott's early novels, only the two tendencies run oftener in separate 
currents, not usually alternating, as with Scott, through the same 
book. 

James Hogg, who turned prose writer in his later years, fathered 
modern stories of ghosts, murder, and robbery, ancient legends of 
the supernatural, such as "The Heart of Eildon," or historical novels, 
such as "The Brownie of Bodsbeck: A Tale of the Covenanters," 
in which he unfortunately competed with "Old Mortality." His 
"Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a story of religious frenzy, 
insanity, and crime, in which the tale of terror is made semi- 
realistic without losing its nerve-racking thrill. A similar union of 

I 159 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

terror and realism, with the latter more emphasized, appears in 
Lockhart's "History of Matthew Wald," which was published in 
the same year (1824). Matthew's wife is not a religious maniac, 
but she is a religious fanatic; Matthew himself goes mad. It is easy 
to see how Scott pronounced the story "full of power, but disagree- 
able." Two years earlier John Wilson published his "Lights and 
Shadows of Scottish Life." Local realism may have been his aim, 
for he declared the book "intensely Scottish"; but the verdict of 
posterity will probably agree with that of Mrs. Oliphant that his 
sketches "represent the romantic sentimentalism of the day rather 
than Scotland or country life or anything else in earth or heaven." 

Three novelists of Scotch blood who contributed to Blackwood's 
but had little personal contact with its ruling spirits were John Gait, 
D. M. Moir, and C. R. Gleig. Gait lived mainly at London, though 
on a northern trip in 1823 he made an admirer of Moir, and a lit- 
erary disciple as well. Moir, the A of Blackwood's, furnished nearly 
four hundred contributions to that magazine, and was the friend 
of John Wilson, but led the life of a busy local physician at Mussel- 
burgh and refused every invitation to settle in the Scotch capital. 
Gleig passed nearly all his life in England and was connected with 
Maga only at long range. 

Gait's "Annals of the Parish" is the work of a prose Crabbe, 
his "Entail" that of a local and lesser Zola, as is also his "Ayrshire 
Legatees," which was first published in Blackwood's in 1820. 
Humor, harshness, and unquestionable veracity are in them; and 
the author, says Professor Cross, "laid bare the heart of Scotland 
as only Burns had done." Other novels of this vigorous but narrow 
genius attempt the historical vein of Scott, though with such ill 
success that they are no longer remembered in connection with the 
writer's name. Moir's chief work, "The Life of Mansie Wauch, 
Tailor in Dalkeith," is in a vein similar to that of Gait, whose friend- 
ship had inspired it. It appeared first in Blackwood's and was re- 
printed in 1828. Gleig's "Subaltern," published in the magazine in 
1826, is fictionized autobiography, describing the adventures of a 
soldier in the Peninsular War. Another story of military adventure 
is "The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton," by Captain 

r 160 1 



THE SCOTCH ERA OF PROSE 

Thomas Hamilton, who lived in Edinburgh, was a contributor to 
Blackwood's and also a friend of Lockhart and Scott. For a time he 
was practically one of the staff of Maga, and we find Lockhart 
urging Blackwood to "poke up Tom Hamilton." 

Not among the writers for Blackwood's yet connected with the 
eddy around it was Susan Ferrier. She was the friend and "sister 
shadow" of Scott; her nephew married the daughter of John Wilson; 
she lived in Edinburgh; and William Blackwood acted as publisher 
for her first two novels. Her three works, "Marriage," "The Inherit- 
ance," and "Destiny," are in a vein that Jane Austen might have 
used if she had been born a Scotchwoman. Languishing English 
beauties, red-haired girls and grim-faced aunts of Scotland, epicu- 
rean, hard-fisted clergymen and arrogant Highland chiefs, are all 
handled with kindness or with satire, as the case may be. 

Scotch poetry, as pointed out earlier, was moribund after 1814, 
but was not wholly dead. In 1824 Lockhart published his "Ancient 
Spanish Ballads," several of which had already appeared in Maga. 
The Spanish vein had been mined by Southey and touched on by 
Frere. In the year of Lockhart's book appeared Sir John Bowring's 
"Ancient Poetry and Romance of Spain." At about the same time 
De Quincey wrote as follows in The London Magazine: "In 1808-9 
you must well remember what a strong impulse the opening of 
the Peninsular War communicated to our current literature. The 
presses of London and the provinces teemed with editions of Spanish 
books, dictionaries, and grammars; and the motions of the British 
armies were accompanied by a corresponding activity among British 
compositors. From the just interest which is now renewed in Spanish 
affairs, I suppose something of the same scene will recur." Lock- 
hart's free but spirited paraphrases came on the crest of the wave, 
and started a popular current that was many years in subsiding. 
"Romantic Spain" now competed with "romantic Italy" among the 
facile and feeble slaves of the pen. Lockhart's collection includes 
"historical" ballads of King Roderick and the Cid, "romantic" 
ballads, among them "Count Arnaldos," paraphrased later by Long- 
fellow as "The Secret of the Sea," and "Moorish" ballads. 

At the gates of old Granada, when all its bolts are barred. 
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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

There are long rattling metres and vivid flashes of color. "The 
March of Bernardo del Carpio" has the masculine energy which 
Mrs. Hemans failed to excite about the same hero: 

The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight, — 
He quits his team for spear and shield and garniture of might; 
The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist, — he flingeth down his crook, 
And rushes from the mountain like a tempest-troubled brook. 

It is a curious contrast with all this and a curious comment on 
popular taste that the great best seller of the late Caledonian muse 
was Pollok's "Course of Time," an impossible didactic poem in 
blank verse, tracing the history of man down from Adam to a date 
not found by the majority of readers. This belated survival of the 
eighteenth century, which was published by Blackwood in 1827, 
went through edition after edition, and finally became a prize book 
for diligent scholars in Sunday or day schools, 

That last infirmity of noble rhymes. 

Just as the third decade of the century merged into the fourth, two 
young Scotch poets, Aytoun and Motherwell, began to revive the 
martial, antique poetry of "The Lay" and "The Queen's Wake"; 
but they were of a younger generation and belong to a later period. 
The years that we have been discussing had been the Scotch 
reign of prose; and the one genuine triumph in verse had been 
a translation. 



[ 162 ] 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Eddy Around Leigh Hunt 

Literary historians have their usual differences of opinion as to 
when the "romantic" or early nineteenth-century period of poetry 
began. 1760, 1798, and 1805 have all been justly pointed out as 
significant dates. Naturally the changes in one phase of poetry over- 
lapped those in another, each period named seeing something altered, 
none beholding a complete revolution. As a boundary between the 
old and new the years 1814-1816 equaled in importance any that pre- 
ceded. Those three years witnessed the downfall of Napoleon, the 
opening up of Europe, the focusing of new and powerful forces on the 
creative imagination of England. Brilliant foreigners came swarming 
into London; brilliant Englishmen poured in a sudden exodus 
through the beautiful landscapes and famous art galleries of the 
continent. Those years divide the early "romantic poets," who were 
little imitated in the late nineteenth century, from the younger 
generation, whose trail spreads over almost all English poetry after 
1850. The earlier Byron was rejected by the late nineteenth cen- 
tury; Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, even when much admired, 
were but little imitated; Keats and Shelley were held up as universal 
models. 

The new eddy that began post-Napoleonic verse grew marked 
about 1815 or 181 6, and gradually disintegrated or realigned itself 
before Leigh Hunt's departure to Italy in 1822. Its archenemy 
Blackwood's dubbed it the "Cockney" school of poetry; Byron, with 
more justice, called it "the Suburban School." Most of the authors 
connected with it were suburbanites, with the virtues and faults 
which their manner of life tended to develop. They were Londoners 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

either by birth or adoption; they moved in respectable society but 
not in the inner circle of wealth and rank; they lived much of their 
time in Hampstead or other outlying regions of the great metropolis. 
Blood and training had placed to their credit as much nobility of 
character as to the London society poets, and greater imaginative 
power; but had prepared a woeful debit account of foibles and 
idiosyncrasies that laid them open to ridicule or misunderstanding. 
Most of them were not university men or men of the world; they 
had traveled little, they had little wealth. 

As is often the case, the central figure in this eddy was neither 
its greatest author nor its most forcible character. Leigh Hunt was 
not only inferior to Keats and Shelley as a poet; he was also, in spite 
of his many virtues, a less dignified and commanding figure as a 
man. He had none of that leonine dignity and military love of system 
which made Victor Hugo, the son of a French general, marshal his 
literary camp as his father had a battalion. Yet Hunt possessed two 
qualities which rendered him for years the center, and to some 
extent the leader, of a literary movement. One was his marvelously 
correct judgment as to the value of contemporary literature. With 
all his errors of judgment in other fields we must grant him this. 
No critic from 1750 to 1830 has had fewer of his decisions reversed 
by posterity. The other and still more important trait was his mag- 
netic power of drawing literary men around him as friends. Carlyle, 
who was not given to gushing, declared him "a man who can be 
other than loved only by those who have not seen him, or seen him 
from a distance through a false medium." Lamb found him "the 
most cordial-minded man I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside 
companion." Cowden Clarke, his lifelong friend, speaks of "that 
bewitching spell of manner which characterized Leigh Hunt beyond 
any man I have ever known." 

It is not easy to draw the exact limits of the literary vortex that 
formed around him, for in the complex life of a great city many 
cross currents tend to mingle streams that in the main run separate. 
Some were more close to him as friends than as writers; others more 
close as writers than as men. Most of them at that time were com- 
paratively obscure; and details about their lives are not always 

[ 164 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

plentiful. Some formed part of the eddy for many years; others, 
such as Shelley, for only a short interval. The group unquestionably 
included the great lyrists Shelley and Keats, and the lesser but 
genuine poets J. H. Reynolds, Hunt himself, James and Horace 
Smith, and Charles Wells. Bryan Waller Procter was more loosely 
connected with it, as was Lamb's friend Charles Lloyd. Cornelius 
Webb, though a very minor poet, was one of the circle. It embraced 
also the prose writers. Lamb and Hazlitt, though the latter's un- 
sociability prevented him from belonging lastingly to any group, 
and he showed enduring affection only for Lamb. Two painters of 
considerable rank, Haydon and Severn, complete the list of those 
who did any remarkable creative work. Besides these there were 
other members of the social group: Charles Cowden Clarke, later 
on the eminent Shakespeare scholar, the Novellos, a family of half- 
Italian musicians, the Oilier brothers, — minor poets and publishers 
for the crowd, as Cottle had been for the Bristol poets, — Charles 
Armitage Brown, Dilke, and others. 

In December, 1812, Leigh Hunt, then twenty-eight years old and 
editor of The Examiner, was condemned to a fine and two years' 
imprisonment for the unwisely frank utterances of his paper about 
the Prince Regent. In his double character as editor of a well-known 
periodical and martyr for liberty, he naturally drew on himself the 
eyes of many enthusiastic young poets, and thus laid the foundation 
for several of his friendships. He was released from prison in 
February, 181 5, and by that time was already beginning to gather 
around him a literary following. 

Before his imprisonment he had known Campbell; during his 
confinement Byron and Moore had visited their fellow apostle of 
freedom and treated him with great kindness and cordiality; but 
none of these men became in any sense his poetical disciples or 
mingled with the little coterie of which he soon became the center. 
Both in verse and society they knelt to other gods. Keats and several 
of the lesser poets, who became Hunt's daily companions, they 
neither met nor wished to meet. 

Of the literary eddy to be. Hunt's first recruits were Haydon, 
Hazlitt, and Lamb. Haydon, later a historical painter of considerable 

[ 165 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

merit but then a poor, struggling young artist, knew Hunt by 1809, 
and in 181 1 "used to sketch and explain what I thought to Leigh 
Hunt, then in the height of his Examiner reputation." Next year 
when Haydon was overcome by poverty and what he considered 
injustice, "Leigh Hunt behaved nobly. He offered me always a plate 
at his table till Solomon was done." Lamb had contributed to Hunt's 
brief-lived Reflector (1810-12); and he and Hazlitt both visited 
Hunt in prison, Lamb and his sister coming "in all weathers, hail or 
sunshine, in daylight and in darkness, even in the dreadful frost 
and snow of the beginning of 1814." Hazlitt and Lamb had been 
friends for years. Hazlitt was introduced to Haydon in 1812 at the 
painter Northcote's, and in a few months was having "daily con- 
tests" with him. Hunt had met Charles Oilier in 1810 and James 
and Horace Smith, authors of the famous "Rejected Addresses," 
even earlier; but relations were apparently not very close until 181 6, 
in which year Haydon first met Horace Smith. 

While Hunt was in prison young Charles Cowden Clarke "was 
good enough to be his own introducer, paving his way, like a proper 
visitor of prisons, with baskets of fruit," although, according to 
Clarke's statement, they had met earlier at a party. It was in his 
character as liberal editor that Hunt won this new neophyte, for 
Clarke tells us: "My father had taken in the Examiner newspaper 
from its commencement, he and I week after week revelling in the 
liberty-loving, liberty-advocating, liberty-eloquent articles of the 
young editor; and now that I made his personal acquaintance I was 
indeed a proud and happy fellow." This eager disciple soon after 
drew in his wake into the Hunt circle John Keats, who had studied 
with him at his father's school and been his friend for years. Some- 
where around the beginning of 181 6 Clarke showed some of Keats's 
poetry to Hunt and Horace Smith, and as a result of their enthu- 
siasm soon after introduced them to the poet himself. 

Before the end of 181 6 two other men, Joseph Severn and John 
Hamilton Reynolds, had become friends of Keats. Severn at this 
time was a lonely engraver's apprentice and casual student of art. 
Later he achieved moderate success as a painter; but his chief claim 
to immortality is his devoted love for the doomed author of "Hype- 

[ 166 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 
rion," over whose tragic death he watched so unselfishly, "his 
perfect friend," as Cowden Clarke enthusiastically declared. During 
visits at Hampstead in or after 1816 Severn met Hunt, Hay- 
don, Reynolds, and Charles Brown, though the latter only of 
them appears to have become his intimate friend. In 181 7, he tells 
us. Hunt introduced him to Shelley. Reynolds, one year younger than 
Keats and equally precocious as a poet, but less capable of con- 
tinuous improvement, was, for a time at least, almost as close to 
his great contemporary as Severn. 

Shelley and Hunt had met before the latter's imprisonment but 
had seen little of each other. In 181 6, however, when the lonely 
lyrist came back from Switzerland, he settled at Great Marlow, in 
Buckinghamshire near London, where for nearly two years, until 
his departure for Italy in the spring of 1818, he was on terms of 
close intimacy with Hunt and saw a good deal of the latter's literary 
friends. It was under Hunt's roof that he met with Keats and Cow- 
den Clarke; and through him his devoted friend Peacock was tempo- 
rarily drawn by attraction into the outer edge of the enthusiastic 

circle. 

Before 181 7 Keats at least was acquainted with Charles Wells, 
from whom he received some roses and to whom in acknowledgment 
he wrote a sonnet. In 181 8 Lloyd settled in London and as a friend 
of Lamb came slightly, but only slightly, in touch with Lamb's 
companions. A more important addition was Bryan Waller Procter, 
better known in that day by his nom de plume of "Barry Cornwall," 
destined to be the most popular, though not the greatest, poet con- 
nected with the eddy. He first met Leigh Hunt in 1817, and by him 
"I was introduced to Keats, Peacock, Hazlitt, Coulson, Novello (the 
composer of music), and to Charles Lamb. Hazlitt took me to 
Haydon and Charles Lloyd; and at Charles Lamb's evening parties 
I found Talfourd, Manning, and the renowned Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge." Procter was the friend of Hunt and Haydon, but saw Keats 
"only two or three times before his departure for Italy." In fact, 
this amiable and popular young writer belonged only incidentally 
to the group, and after 1820, when he had become famous, associated 

[ 167 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

fully as much with the Holland House poets, Rogers, Campbell, and 
Moore, as with them.* 

Shelley went to Italy in 1818, Keats and Severn in 182 1, Hunt 
in 1822. After that, though a social group remained, its literary 
glory was past. Lamb, Procter, and Reynolds were drawn into a 
kindred and closely related eddy, that of the London Magazine. 
Eventually, Procter abandoned poetry for married happiness and 
Reynolds left it for the law. With the exception of ''Barry Corn- 
wall," not one of them had gained, in art, poetry, or prose, either 
wealth or general recognition. They were destined to be the chief 
molding force in English poetry for nearly a century; but in 1820 
John Bull would have heard of their future with a contemptuous 
stare. 

The life that they led was utterly different from that of the Scotch 
or Lake or Holland House poets. Instead of the wild grandeur of 
Skiddaw and lonely majesty of Winander they saw, in the words 
of Hazlitt, "Hampstead and Highgate, with their hanging gardens 
and lofty terraces, and Primrose Hill nestling beneath them, in 
green, pastoral luxury, the delight of the Cockneys, the aversion of 
Sir Walter and his merry men." Everything around them was un- 
eventful, ungigantic, pretty, and commonplace. There is something 
pathetic in hearing Hunt cry at the age of thirty-eight: "The ALPS! 
It was the first time I had seen mountains." And he adds in uncon- 
scious comment on the surroundings that had encouraged his own 
too feminine verse: "I seemed to meet for the first time a grand 
poetical thought in a material shape." Those peaks were so unlike 
his own picture of Hampstead: 

woods that let mansions through, 
And cottaged vales with pillowy fields beyond, 
And clump of darkening pines, and prospects blue. 

Scott among his ruined peels and frowning Trossachs is equally un- 
like Cowden Clarke's description of himself at Highgate, "in that 

* For some further details regarding this group, see chapter III of Sidney Colvin's 
"John Keats" (1917) and chapter XVI of Roger Ingpen's "Shelley in England" (1917), 
both of which books were published after this chapter was written. 

[ 168 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

pretty suburban spot, then green with tall trees and shrub-grown 
gardens and near adjoining meadows. Pleasant were the walks taken 
arm-in-arm with such a host and entertainer as Leigh Hunt. Some- 
times . . . past a handsome white detached house in a shrubbery 
with a long low gallery built out"; or "on through the pretty bowery 
lane — then popularly known as Millfield Lane, but called in his 
circle Poets' Lane, frequented as it was by himself, Shelley, Keats, 
and Coleridge." 

Their social life was different from that of the other groups. They 
alone had the informal, amusing, but often inspiring atmosphere 
of literary bohemia. Their social life mingled together the different 
arts as was not done elsewhere until the days of the pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood. Poets and critics argued in Haydon's studio while he 
sketched; in Italy Severn painted pictures from the verse of Keats; 
in England the two had strolled together through the paintings of 
the National Gallery and the sculpture galleries of the British 
Museum. All alike listened to the music of the Novellos; and 
Haydon, the arch-enthusiast over the Elgin Marbles, made his com- 
rades bow in devotion before those noble examples of Greek stat- 
uary. Cowden Clarke gives a graphic picture of their life. "The 
glorious feasts of sacred music at the Portuguese Chapel in South 
Street, Grosvenor Square, where Vincent Novello was organist, and 
introduced the masses of Mozart and Haydn for the first time in 
England, and where the noble old Gregorian hymn tunes and re- 
sponses were chanted to perfection by a small but select choir drilled 
and cultivated by him; the exquisite evenings of Mozartian operatic 
and chamber music at Vincent Novello's own house, where Leigh 
Hunt, Shelley, Keats, and the Lambs were invited guests; the bril- 
liant supper parties at the alternate dwellings of the Novellos, the 
Hunts, and the Lambs, who had mutually agreed that bread and 
cheese, with celery, and Elia's immortalized 'Lutheran beer,' were 
to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at the theater, when 
Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston, and Fanny Kelly 
were on the stage; and the picnic repasts enjoyed together by 
appointment in the fields that then lay spread in green breadth and 
luxuriance between the west-end of Oxford Street and the western 

[ 169 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

slope of Hampstead Hill— are things never to be forgotten." This 
was between 1816 and 181 7. In July, 181 9, Hunt wrote to Mary 
Shelley: "I see a good deal of Lamb, Hazlitt, Coulson, the Novellos, 
etc., but as much at their own house as at mine, or rather more just 
now. We give no dinners as we used. Our two other out-of-door 
amusements are the theatre (an involuntary one), and taking our 
books and sandwiches, and spending a day in the fields, — which 
we do often." 

No one would venture to say how far the literature of the group 
was the product of their environment, how far of common feelings 
existing beforehand in all its members, how far of Hunt's influence. 
All three forces had their part. Lamb's prose has more kinship to 
the genial informality of Hunt's essays than is generally recognized; 
and the two men had been associating and publishing through the 
same channels for nearly a decade before Lamb reached his high- 
water mark as Elia. Definite and numerous likenesses can be traced 
between the poetry of Hunt and much of the verse by Reynolds, 
Webb, Keats, and Procter, with more questionable traces in a few 
poems of Shelley. It must be remembered, however, that in a great 
metropolis with wide range of choice in acquaintance, men of similar 
tastes tend to gravitate toward each other; and what seems to be 
imitation is often merely the result of like minds affiliating together. 
All the Holland House poets imitated Pope, but most of them had 
done so before they became Holland House poets. If the Hunt 
circle wrote as they did partly because they saw much of each other 
and lived much in the suburbs, it is probably also true that they 
sought each other's company and turned much to the suburbs 
because of their natural taste. 

Many members of the eddy were acquaintances rather than 
friends, held together by their common love of Keats or Hunt, and 
at times there were bitter ''rifts within the lute"; yet unquestion- 
ably there was a considerable amount of communal literary activity. 
Hunt and Keats on a challenge wrote rival sonnets "On the Grass- 
hopper and the Cricket." Keats and Brown collaborated in the 
drama of "Otho the Great." Hunt and Hazlitt wrote "The Round 
Table" together, the essays appearing in Hunt's Examiner. Shelley's 

[ 170 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

''To the Nile" was written in competition with Keats and Hunt, 
and his "Revolt of Islam" in generous rivalry with Keats's "Endym- 
ion." Keats's "Sleep and Poetry" was composed in Hunt's library, 
and the last sixty or seventy lines are an inventory of the art garni- 
ture of the room. Procter's "Sicilian Story" and Keats's "Isabella" 
retell the same tale from Boccaccio; and Reynolds's "Garden of 
Florence" and "Ladye of Provence" are tales from the same source, 
tales that Keats and Reynolds planned together. Hunt's "Literary 
Pocket-book" (1819-22) was a group publication, containing short 
poems and prose pieces by Cowden Clarke, Shelley, Keats, Procter, 
Charles Oilier, Hunt himself, Cornelius Webb, Lloyd, and others. 
We have fragmentary records of critical discussions between Hay- 
don and Hazlitt, Hunt and Keats, Hunt and Shelley, Keats and 
Severn. Each writer kept his own individuality, yet in many details 
would not have written as he did had he not been part of the literary 
eddy around Leigh Hunt. 

One of the most marked characteristics of the "school" was its 
delight in luxurious surrender to the joys of the senses. "Oh for a 
life of sensations rather than of thoughts," cried Keats, and in 1818: 
"I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of 
the luxurious, and a love for philosophy." The next year Hunt wrote 
to Shelley: "The other day I had a delicious sleep in a haycock. 
These green fields and blue skies throw me into a kind of placid 
intoxication. , . . There is a sort of kind and beautiful sensuality in 
it which softens the cuts and oppressiveness of intellectual percep- 
tion." Hunt's "Story of Rimini," Keats's earlier poems, and some of 
Reynolds and Procter are full of this mood. It is in itself an exceed- 
ingly poetical one, but when reduced to composition fails to develop 
either mental content or moral force, and becomes indeed the flesh 
and blood of poetry, but the flesh and blood without the bones. 

More unfortunate as a group characteristic was the use of lan- 
guage. Hunt was one of the most just appraisers of contemporary 
literature that ever lived, yet, curiously enough, his mind was at the 
same time woefully prolific in bad theories of art. All his good judg- 
ment seemed to revive at the sight of something already done and 
vanish before something yet to do. He evolved a vicious, forced, 

[ 171 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

and artificial poetic diction, a matter fully as much of phrases as of 
words; and in this every one of his verse satellites except Shelley at 
times followed him. It consisted partly in the use of colloquial ex- 
pressions for dignified poetry, partly in coining of unnatural and 
unidiomatic expressions, and so ran into two extremes at once. Thus 
Hunt talks about "the clumpy bays" and "the gazel with his lamp- 
ing eyes." Keats tells of a priest "begirt with ministring looks," 
and mothers who fill their script with "needments." Reynolds can 
speak of a lady's "easy shoulder" and her hand "so sonnet-sweet." 
This, however, was mere froth above the seething ideas in the lit- 
erary melting pot; and these superficial blemishes might be ignored, 
had not Blackwood' s and the Quarterly by savage emphasis on 
them made them part of literary history. The poets in question were 
outgrowing their defects; and Hunt criticised in Keats the very 
faults which his own example had encouraged. 

Every group or eddy so far mentioned had some metre which it 
employed frequently and other groups rarely, and which became to 
a moderate degree characteristic of it. The Bristol and Lake poets 
clung to blank verse, which they used in non-dramatic poetry more 
than all their contemporaries combined. The Scotch authors loved 
the varying ballad metres and closely related octosyllabics. For all 
London poets the most characteristic metre was some variety of the 
pentameter couplet, whether the polished and compact verse of Pope 
or the fluid and easy style of Chaucer, both of whom had been 
London men, and had left in their former haunts a tradition more 
vividly alive than elsewhere. The Holland House authors preferred 
either the pure Pope tradition or Crabbe's narrative variant, which 
Byron used in so many romantic tales. The Hunt group never imi- 
tated Pope but made freer the freedom of Dryden, or preferred, as 
Keats put it modestly. 

To stammer where old Chaucer us'd to sing. 

With the influence of Chaucer they mingled that of Spenser. He was 
par excellence the literary idol of this group, as Milton was of the 
Stowey or Lake poets, and Pope or Addison of the Holland House 
writers. Leigh Hunt at twelve imitated Spenser in several hundred 

[ 172 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

lines of a poem called ''The Fairy Ring." In 1813 he "never stepped 
out-of-doors without a book in my hand, mostly a volume of Spenser 
or Milton." His oldest daughter "was christened Mary after my 
mother, and Florimel after one of Spenser's heroines." Procter, writ- 
ing of a period some years later, tells us that Hunt "liked Milton 
more, and Spenser far more, than Shakespeare," and that he had a 
line from "The Faerie Queene" in gilt letters over the door of his 
study. The boy Keats, three or four years before he met Hunt, went 
through the first volume of that poets' poem "as a young horse would 
through a spring meadow — ramping." His earliest known verses are 
"Lines in Imitation of Spenser." He inspired the devoted Severn 
with the same enthusiasm. When it was announced that the theme 
for the Grand Prize in Historical Painting would be Book I, Canto X, 
of "The Faerie Queene," Keats and Severn felt that the world and 
its opportunities were now at their feet; and the latter eventually 
won the prize, his first artistic triumph. The stanza of Spenser was 
only occasionally used by Hunt and his friends; but they had so 
filled themselves with the atmosphere of "The Faerie Queene" that 
their pentameter couplets often seem more like it than the nine-line 
stanzas of "Childe Harold." Their favorite metre was a flower from 
Chaucer's garden cross-fertilized with Spenserian pollen. 

It must be remembered that the distinction between their couplets 
and those of Rogers, Byron, Moore, and Campbell, though generally 
valid, was not always marked. That particular metre was then in a 
stage of rapid transition; and Pope's "Dunciad," Byron's "English 
Bards," Rogers's "Human Life," Byron's "Corsair," Moore's 
"Veiled Prophet," Hunt's "Rimini," and Keats's "Endymion" would 
read like steps in a gradual evolution, did not social and chrono- 
logical facts indicate otherwise. The general line of cleavage, how- 
ever, is reasonably obvious, even if Hunt did say that after "Rimini" 
he had the pleasure "of seeing all the reigning poets, without excep- 
tion, break up their own heroic couplets into freer modulation 
(which they never afterwards abandoned)." 

This romantic variation of the couplet, as it has been called, with 
its run-on lines and couplets, its feminine endings and lightly 
stressed endings, with its luxury and languor, its occasional mawk- 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

ishness and unfailing music, plays a large part in the volumes of all 
the "suburban" poets. Hunt used it for "Rimini," "Hero and 
Leander," "Abou Ben Adhem," "Jaffar," and many a less-known 
poem. Keats, unlike Hunt, did not usually rise to his highest level 
in this rhythm, but about half of his non-dramatic verse is written 
in it: "I stood tiptoe," "Calidore," "Sleep and Poetry," "Endym- 
ion," and the rhyming Epistles. "Lamia" is the same movement 
braced into vigor by Dryden. It was in this medium that he voiced 
the prayer which unpitying gods refused: 

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm 

Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed 

That my own soul has to itself decreed. 

Then will I pass the countries that I see 

In long perspective, and continually 

Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass 

Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass. 

Feed upon apples red, and strawberries, 

And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees. 

Reynolds plays on the same instrument in "The Garden of Flor- 
ence": 

O, lovers are long watchers of the night! 
Watchers of coiling darkness — of the light — 
Of the cold window-pane, whereon the moon 
Casteth her sallow smile in night's mid-noon — 
Of the unwearied stars that watch on high 
As though they were lone lovers in the sky. 

Practically the same metre, only varied by occasional alternate 
rhymes, is the favorite in narrative of Procter, the main note, for 
example, though with numerous variations, in the "Sicilian Tale." 
He used it in "Marcian Colonna," and in many shorter poems of 
that volume, as, for example, in "A Voice": 

Oh! what a voice is silent. It was soft 
As mountain-echoes, when the winds aloft — 
The gentle winds of summer meet in caves; 
Or when in sheltered places the white waves 

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THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

Are 'wakened into music, as the breeze 

Dimples and stems the current: or as trees 

Shaking their green locks in the days of June: 

Or Delphic girls when to the maiden moon 

They sang harmonious pray'rs: or sounds that come 

(However near) like a faint distant hum 

Out of the grass, from which mysterious birth 

We guess the busy secrets of the earth. 

— Like the low voice of Syrinx, when she ran 

Into the forests from Arcadian Pan, 

In addition to their worship of sensuousness and of Spenser, their 
artificial diction and luscious metre, a nobler badge of the group was 
their love of the Greeks and of the Greek sense of beauty, though 
that cult at times degenerated in their hands into a beauty-worship 
almost decadent. The eighteenth century and the first decade of the 
nineteenth had shown little genuine knowledge of Greek art and 
literature, little tendency to imitate what was noblest in their tech- 
nique or spirit. In fact Joseph Cottle, who, as an ex-publisher, should 
have some idea of public taste, wrote in the Preface to his second 
edition of "Alfred": ''Whoever in these times, founds a machinery 
on the mythology of the Greeks, will do so at his peril." During the 
second decade of the new century there began a marked stream of 
Hellenized poetry, which has continued ever since. It ran at first 
in two currents, the popular one of Byron and the unpopular one 
of the "suburban" poets, the latter, as frequently happens, event- 
ually becoming the greater of the two. Apparently the stream of 
influence began with Haydon. In 1808, eight years before the Elgin 
Marbles were placed on public exhibition, he was admitted to see 
those noble examples of classic sculpture in the owner's private 
rooms. "I shall never forget the horses' heads," he tells us, "the feet 
in the metopes! I felt as if a divine truth had blazed inwardly upon 
my mind, and I knew that they would at last rouse the art of Europe 
from its slumber in the darkness." At his next visit he brought the 
famous painter Fuseli, who shared his enthusiasm, and strode about 
crying in his broken English, "De Greeks were godes! de Greeks 
were godes!" For three months Haydon drew from these models, 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

working twelve, fourteen, and fifteen hours at a time, and read 
Homer in English to stir his fancy for the work. How much of this 
enthusiasm he communicated to his friends Hunt and Hazlitt we 
are left to guess; but they both grew to share it. In 1 819 Hunt wrote 
to Mary Shelley: "What divine writers those Greek tragedians are! 
I should quarrel more with the unjust and shocking superstition 
about history, upon which their writings are founded, were they not 
perpetually yearning after every species of beauty, moral and 
physical." In the Preface to his 'Toliage" (1818) he tells us that 
"the main features of the book are a love of sociality, of the country, 
and of the fine imagination of the Greeks," and speaks of "that 
beautiful mythology, which it is not one of the least merits of the 
new school to be restoring to its proper estimation." Hazlitt in 
"Table Talk" says of statues that he "never liked any till I saw the 
Elgin marbles." Elsewhere he declared that "Rome and Athens filled 
a place in the history of mankind, which can never be occupied 
again." In words that remind us of Keats's "Grecian Urn," Hazlitt 
said of Greek statues: "The sense of perfect form nearly occupies 
the whole mind, and hardly suffers it to dwell on any other feeling. 
It seems enough for them to be, without acting or suffering. Their 
forms are ideal, spiritual. Their beauty is power. By their beauty 
they are raised above the frailties of pain or passion; by their beauty 
they are deified." In 181 6, the very year in which the Hunt group 
drew to a head, the Elgin Marbles were placed on public exhibition 
in the British Museum. Keats, says William Sharp, "went again and 
again to see the Elgin marbles, and would sit for an hour or more 
at a time beside them rapt in revery. On one such occasion Severn 
came upon the young poet, with eyes shining so brightly and face 
so lit up by some visionary rapture, that he stole quietly away 
without intrusion." Earlier in 181 6 Hay don had published in Hunt's 
Examiner (as well as in The Champion) a fiery defence of the cele- 
brated marbles, in which he ranked them "above all other works 
of art in the world." In the meanwhile we must not overlook the 
influence of Byron, who had been the friend of Hunt during the 
latter's imprisonment and for four years the most popular poet in 
Great Britain. The second canto of "Childe Harold" was full of 

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THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

Hellenic atmosphere. So were the opening lines of ''The Giaour" 
and of the second canto of "Abydos," poems which Byron had sent 
to Hunt during the latter's imprisonment. 

Contemporary with the influence of Byron and Greek statuary 
came also that of German romantic criticism. In 1815 the lectures 
of A. W. Schlegel appeared in an English translation, and the fol- 
lowing spring were reviewed by Hazlitt at great length in The Edin- 
burgh. The review said that Schlegel's work had "too much of 
everything, but especially of Greece"; yet in a year or two Hazlitt 
had been converted to a Hellenism as reverent as that of Schlegel 
himself. The Grecian enthusiasm of the Hunt circle was the English 
analogue of the Hellenic tendency in Germany a few years earlier, 
in the work of Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, and the romantic critics. 
The result was a wave of Hellenism which touched almost every 
poet and painter of Hunt's group. He himself retold the story of 
Hero and Leander and in "The Nymphs" gave a poetic panorama 
of "fair-limbed Dryads," Hamadryads, Napeads, the Limniad "who 
takes Her pleasure in the lakes," and "The Oreads that frequent 
the lifted mountains." Peacock, in 181 8, just after his brief and 
rather tenuous connection with the group, published "Rhodo- 
daphne," a wildly romantic legend of ancient Hellas, with palaces 
that vanish, malignant deities, and dead brides that come to life. 
Procter's "Flood of Thessaly" (1823) develops in respectable 
Miltonic verse the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, ending with 
Deucalion's Miltonic vision of the coming glories of ancient Hellas. 
Procter before this had written a brief masque, "The Rape of 
Proserpine," and pastoral dialogues based on Greek story, also a 
short poem "On the Statue of Theseus" (one of the Elgin Marbles) 
ending: 

Methinks, 
(So perfect is the Phidian stone) his sire 
The sea-god Neptune, hath in anger stopped 
The current of life, and with his trident touch 
Hath struck him into marble. 

Charles Wells in his "Stories After Nature" (1822), a collection of 
crude yet poetical prose narratives, has two or three tales from 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

ancient Greece; and in one of them, "Dion," he says that the original 
story "has the passion, the dignity, and nature of the Elgin 
Marbles." Swinburne has pointed out in this little book "the per- 
ceptible influence of Leigh Hunt in some of the stories." Lamb has 
a similar allusion to the famous sculptures in his essay on beggars. 
Even Reynolds wrote a volume entitled "The Naiad," though there 
is nothing very Greek about it. Haydon preferred Hebraic to Hel- 
lenic subjects for his paintings; but he said of the Elgin Marbles: 
"I gained from these sublime relics the leading principles of my 
practice." Severn was hardly launched as an artist before his journey 
to Italy; but after that he painted several scenes, indifferently good, 
on Greek subjects: "The Death of Alcibiades," "Alexander the 
Great Reading Homer," and "Greek Hill-Shepherds Rescuing a 
Lamb from an Eagle," the last founded on a passage in Keats's 
"Hymn to Pan." He tells us that on their voyage to Italy, Keats 
"made it all live again, that old antique world when the Greek 
galleys and Tyrhenian sloops brought northward strange tales of 
what was happening in Hellas and the mysterious East." And Rome 
after their arrival would never have been a joy to the young painter 
"had it not been for Keats's talks with me about the Greek spirit, — 
the Religion of the Beautiful, the Religion of Joy, as he used to call 
it. All that was finest in sculpture — and, as I came to see directly 
or indirectly, all that was finest too in painting, in everything — was 
due to that supreme influence." Lamb tells us how Procter radiated 
a similar, though more transitory, enthusiasm. "Barry Cornwall has 
his tritons and his nereids gambolling before him in nocturnal 
visions. ... It was after reading the noble Dream of this 
poet, that my fancy ran strong upon these marine spectra. . . . 
Methought I was upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding 
and mounted high, with the customary train sounding their conches 
before me." 

If there was so much Hellenism among the minor figures of the 
eddy, we are not surprised that it permeates the best work of the 
two principal figures, Keats and Shelley, "both Greek poets," as 
Severn wrote of them years after their deaths. The Greek part of 
Keats appears to have been born in him. As a boy he lived with 

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THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

Tooke's "Pantheon," Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," and 
Spence's "Polymetis" until he almost knew them by heart. Yet his 
first volume, though it contains a number of incidental allusions to 
classic mythology, buries these under a mass of pretty but childish 
pseudo-medievalism, wherein neither thought, story, nor atmos- 
phere are genuinely Hellenic. 

In "Endymion," however, though the hazy glamour of Spenser 
is over it all, one breathes true Athenian air. "I hope I have not in 
too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled 
its brightness," wrote the author in his Preface. The suburban 
prettiness of his environment was none too much like that of the 
great ancients, where 

The mountains look on Marathon, 
And Marathon looks on the sea. 

Instead he opens : 

So I will begin 
Now while I cannot hear the city's din; 
Now while the early budders are just new. 

Instead of Alcman's "peaks and ravines of the mountains," "head- 
lands and torrent beds," Keats turns Mt. Latmos into a Hampstead 
park. 

Paths there were many, 
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny. 
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly 
To a wide lawn. 

But when he once gets under way, with Arethusa calling through 
the caverns and "the giant sea above," Hampstead gives place to 
Hellas. 

Far as the mariner on highest mast 

Can see all round upon the calmed vast, 

So wide was Neptune's hall. . . . They stood in dreams 

Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang; 

The Nereids danced; the Syrens faintly sang. 

And the great Sea-King bowed his dripping head. 

[ 179 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

In the volume of 1820 "Lamia," the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 
"Ode to Psyche," and "Hyperion" are as nobly Hellenic as any 
poems in the language. The pretty suburban flower gardens are 
forgotten; and the poet can write of conflicts and tragedies. 

Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe. 

Early influences on Shelley had not been Hellenizing. His boy- 
hood love in literature was for the novels of Ann Radcliffe or similar 
pabulum; and his prentice work in both poetry and prose was at 
times an orgy of the crudest, most hair-raising Gothic romance. 
Then Godwin's "Political Justice" revolutionized his whole nature. 
"It materially influenced my character," Shelley wrote to the author 
in 1 81 2, "and I rose from its perusal a wiser and a better man. I was 
no longer the votary of romance. ... I beheld, in short, that I had 
duties to perform." In this temper he produced the anarchistic 
"Queen Mab," which gave more evidence of increased virtue than 
of increased wisdom. It was in this mood that he visited the Lake 
region in 181 2. Southey, to whom several contemporaries agree that 
Shelley had a marked personal resemblance, wrote of the incident: 
"Here is a man at Keswick who acts upon me as my own ghost 
would do. He is just what I was in 1794." Then came another revul- 
sion, which produced the beautiful but by no means Grecian 
"Alastor"; and soon after that Shelley became intimate with Hunt. 
Hardly a trace of special enthusiasm for the Greeks appears in 
Shelley's poetry either before or during that intimacy; but imme- 
diately after its end and his journey to Italy in 181 8 he began 
lighting his torches at Hellenic altar-fires. It is a natural assumption 
that the Greek enthusiasm of the group woke the dormant Grecian 
in his soul. In 1 819 he wrote to Peacock: "O, but for that series of 
wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the 
world; but for the Christian religion, which put the finishing stroke 
on the ancient system; but for those changes that conducted 
Athens to its ruin, — to what an eminence might not humanity have 
arrived!" Later in the same year he wrote to John Gisborne: "Were 
not the Greeks a glorious people? What is there, as Job says of the 
Leviathan, like unto them? If the army of Nicias had not been 

[ 180 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

defeated under the walls of Syracuse; if the Athenians had, acquir- 
ing Sicily, held the balance between Rome and Carthage, sent 
garrisons to the Greek colonies in the South of Italy, Rome might 
have been all that its intellectual condition entitled it to be, a tribu- 
tary, not the conqueror of Greece." In his posthumous "Essay on 
the Revival of Literature" Shelley speaks of "Grecian literature, — 
the finest the world has ever produced." 

These utterances went hand in hand with creative poetry on Greek 
themes. The drama of "Hellas" was suggested by Aeschylus' 
"Persians," and, with all its faults, reveals the great model in the 
noble closing chorus. 

Another Athens shall arise, 

And to remoter time 
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 

The splendor of its prime. 

Apollo walks "over the mountains and the waves." Arethusa leaves 
"her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains." In the 
"Hymn of Pan" we are among 

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves. 

Yet Shelley at bottom, unlike Keats, had more Greek enthusiasm 
than Greek spirit. This fact becomes plainest in the "Prometheus 
Unbound." The play begins as a Greek drama, and after the first 
act drifts rapidly away from both action and psychology into a 
medley of vaguely connected, though beautiful, atmospheric out- 
bursts. It is like a comet, a burning head of drama, trailing a tenuous 
mist of song. On the lyric and emotional mind of Shelley, so much 
less favorable to thorough comprehension of any foreign literature 
than the more narrative, descriptive, and analytic inspiration of 
Keats, this abrupt inpouring of ancient Athenian culture, like a 
cataract falling across a sunbeam, produced a glorious iridescence, 
which is associated with the cause but hardly akin to it. Had the 
two poets lived, we believe that the Hellenism of Shelley would have 
proved a passing enthusiasm, that of Keats a lasting faith. 

From 1815 to 1822 nearly all poetry on Hellenic themes came 

[ 181 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

from the Hunt Eddy. Wordsworth produced his noble "Laodamia" 
and "Dion," both written about 1814, and in the following year said 
of the Elgin Marbles: "A man must be senseless as a clod, or as 
perverse as a fiend, not to be enraptured with them." But this in 
him was only a temporary ripple. Byron's enthusiasm, which was 
more that of the traveler than that of the true Hellenic vates, lay 
dormant from "The Corsair" in 18 14 to "The Isles of Greece" in 
182 1. There was a growing interest in Grecian material, as in all 
things foreign and historic; and this, with Byron's example, called 
from Mrs. Hemans a lengthy poem, "Modern Greece," as well as 
a number of brief lyrics; but the chief credit for enriching modern 
poetry from Greek models and mythology must rest with Keats and 
Shelley and their less-known fellow workers who helped to create 
the atmosphere in which they composed. 

Two other literary movements which the Hunt Eddy helped to 
forward, but which will be dwelt on separately later, were the Italian 
and the Elizabethan. Hunt, Keats, Shelley, Reynolds, Procter, 
Lloyd, and Wells all at times drew material from the great Italian 
quarry. Hunt from early manhood had been an enthusiast for Italy 
and its literature. As a result, probably, of his friendship, Haydon 
about 1812 "was seized with a fury for Italian" that vented its 
temporary enthusiasm on the sonnets of Petrarch. Their friends, 
the Novellos, were partly of Italian blood. Lamb, Hazlitt, Procter, 
Wells, and Cowden Clarke were connected with the growing study 
of the Elizabethan dramatists. This group of "suburban" poets, 
with all its faults, formed the watershed where old influences died 
out and new streams of influence flowed down into the later nine- 
teenth century. Most of what afterward proved great germinated 
with them. Among other tendencies, they foreshadowed the later 
pre-Raphaelites. As already noted, their social life approximated 
the pre-Raphaelite type in its union of different arts, music, 
painting, sculpture, and poetry. Professor Elton finds "the move- 
ment of parts of 'Jason' or 'The Earthly Paradise' " forecast in 
Keats's "Lamia"; and his "Eve of St. Mark" "is no collateral or 
remote, but a direct and near ancestor of Tennyson's 'St. Agnes' Eve' 
and the drawings by Millais and his companions." In 1847 Ruskin 

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THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

and Severn were in sympathetic correspondence over "the want of 
feeling for Religious Art in England"; and Ruskin was pouring in 
Severn's apparently sympathetic ear his pre-Raphaelite propa- 
ganda: "I fully anticipate seeing the Carraccis and Murillos and 
Carlo Dolcis, and coarse copies of Titian and Rubens, and all the 
tribe of the potsherd painters, and drunkard painters, cleared out 
one by one from our Galleries; their places supplied by Angelico, 
Francia, and Perugino." 

Yet this eddy, so rich in suggestion for great poetry, was not of 
a nature to bring great poetry into perfect maturity. It was a 
hothouse nursery for literary plants, which could only reach their 
full blossom when transplanted elsewhere. Of Shelley's best work, 
''Alastor" and the ''Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty" were written 
before he became identified with the group, all the rest after he 
went to Italy. The first two volumes of Keats, though they do not 
deserve the scathing contempt of Swinburne, would never make 
the author great; his third volume, on which his fame depends, was 
written in a spirit of decided revulsion against the atmosphere of 
the Hunt circle. By the end of 1818 this is his mood: "Hunt keeps 
on in his old way — I am completely tired of it all. He has lately 
published a Pocket Book called the Literary Pocket-Book — full of 
the most sickening stuff you can imagine"; or again: "The night 
we went to Novello's there was a complete set to of music and 
punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my 
own inclinations I should never meet any one of that set again, not 
even Hunt." Allowance must be made for Keats's morbid condi- 
tion — , he himself contributed some of the "sickening stuff" to the 
Pocket-Book — , and he had been influenced by a breach between 
Hunt and Haydon; yet it is unquestionable that the style and models 
of his later poems diverge from those of the Hunt group, retaining 
certain traces of that mother movement mingled with more virile 
blood. We find the same attitude in Shelley, who owed much to the 
Hunt circle yet did best when away from it. In 1820 he wrote from 
Italy: "Keats's new volume has arrived to us, and the fragment 
called 'Hyperion' promises for him that he is destined to become one 
of the first writers of the age. His other things are imperfect enough, 

[ 183 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

and what is worse, written in the bad sort of style which is becom- 
ing fashionable among those who fancy that they are imitatmg Hunt 
and Wordsworth." 

All the men connected with this eddy were the subject of press 
hostility as no group of English authors before had been in literary 
history Even Procter, popular both as a poet and a man, was at- 
tacked by Blackwood's for his effeminacy. Lamb was a ''Cockney 
Scribbler," Haydon the "Raphael of the Cockneys," and Hazlitt's 
"pimpled face" gleamed like Bardolph's nose through the shadows 
of vituperation. Keats was a "bardling" and a "mannikin"; Hunt, 
author of the "smutty 'Story of Rimini.' " Even death did not ap- 
pease that hostility. When the news of Shelley's drowning reached 
London, an evening journal remarked, "He will now know whether 
there is a Hell or not." The pathetic inscription on Keats's tomb- 
stone for years evoked only the flippant comment that enraged 
Severn: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water, and his works 
in milk and water." 

The original cause of these attacks was political. Hunt had been 
a champion of the Liberal party, and often savage and personal 
in his remarks, thereby drawing down on all around him the Tory 
lightnings of Blackwood's and The Quarterly. But there was social 
prejudice also. The Holland House poets, who at times were friendly 
and at other times might have been, often showed hostility to all 
but Shelley and Procter on the ground that the others were "Cock- 
neys," poets of a life that lacked breeding and cosmopolitan breadth. 
This aversion was increased in Byron and Campbell by a partly 
erroneous belief that the "Cockneys" were militant enemies of their 
idol Pope. Also behind the hostility of Blackwood's and the passive 
acquiescence in it of Scott— so unlike his usual generous nature- 
there was a certain amount of half-unconscious race antipathy. The 
"Cockneys" were South of England men— except Hazlitt, who was 
Irish, and the Novellos, who were part Italian. They belonged to 
another world than that of the rugged north, and when facing it 
could neither understand nor be understood. Keats felt no enthu- 
siasm about his Scotch trip, and found that "the clouds, the sky, the 
houses, all seem anti-Grecian and anti-Charlemagnish." Hunt had 

[ 184 ] 



THE EDDY AROUND LEIGH HUNT 

written earlier: "There is a vein in Smollett — a Scotch vein — which 
is always disgusting to people of delicacy." *'I have been trying all 
my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experi- 
ment in despair," said Lamb in "Imperfect Sympathies," voicing 
one prejudice at least, if nothing else, which he shared with his 
fellow Londoner, Dr. Johnson. In those days the jealousy between 
the two national capitals was a very genuine thing. Back of all this, 
there were literary reasons for the Hunt group's unpopularity. Their 
bad poetry often was unmanly, and their good poetry was a voice 
crying in the wilderness twenty years too soon. The storm that 
broke over them was unjust and regrettable, but might easily have 
been expected. Perhaps too much has already been said about this 
unhappy war between literary brethren. John Wilson in 1834 gen- 
erously retracted all past attacks on the "Cockneys"; and it is to 
his dignified words that the curtain should fall on bygone tragedy 
and bygone billingsgate: "The animosities are mortal, but the 
humanities live forever." 



[ 185 ] 



CHAPTER IX 

The Elizabethan Current and The Lo?idon Magazine 



Connected with the eddy around Hunt, and therefore best taken 
up immediately after it, are two minor literary movements, one a 
thin, struggling stream for many years, the other a brief but more 
widespreading eddy, into which part of the first may be said to have 
disembogued. 

The line of Elizabethan development ran tangent to the circles 
of Bristol and Lake poets, "Cockneys" and London Magazine 
authors, touching them all without becoming thoroughly identified 
with any one. It began as a scholarly and interpretative movement, 
and in that field rendered its greatest services to mankind; but it 
later developed, or modified in their development, a number of 
poetical closet dramas. There had been during the late eighteenth 
century an increase in popular interest about Shakespeare, and a 
marked improvement in textual criticism. It remained for the early 
nineteenth century to furnish a profound analysis of Shakespeare's 
drama as literature; to resurrect forgotten masterpieces of his 
humbler brethren, and to call from modern pens a large amount of 
deeply felt, though not wholly successful, Elizabethan imitation. 

The current began with Lamb, Coleridge, and Hazlitt, all of 
whom had some connection at different periods with both the 
Bristol and "Cockney" eddies. Lamb led the way. In 1796, in the 
golden days of Pantisocracy, he wrote to Coleridge: "I writhe with 
indignation when in books of Criticism, where common place quota- 
tion is heaped upon quotation, I find no mention of such men as 
Massinger, or B. and FL, men with whom succeeding Dramatic 
Writers (Otway alone excepted) can bear no manner of comparison. 

[ 186 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

Stupid Knox hath noticed none of 'em among his extracts." In 1801 
Lamb wrote to Godwin advocating the use of scenes and incidents 
from old dramas, and at that very time he was trying to write a new 
"As You Like It" in his own abortive "John Woodvil." Three years 
later we find in Southey's correspondence: "I saw Longman yester- 
day. ... I am trying to make him publish a collection of the scarce 
old English poets, which will be the fittest thing in the world for 
Lamb to manage, if he likes it." This troubling of the mental waters 
in 1807 evoked the charming though not epoch-making "Tales from 
Shakespeare" by Charles and Mary Lamb jointly; and the next 
year Lamb published his "Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets 
who lived about the time of Shakespeare." The latter is a milestone 
in the history of Elizabethan influence. Its Preface tells us how far 
the dust of oblivion had gathered on many a great Elizabethan: 
"More than a third part of the following specimens are from plays 
which are to be found only in the British Museum and in some 
scarce private libraries." The editor speaks of Ben Jonson, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, and of Massinger (whom Gifford had edited in 
1805) as well known; and wishes "to exhibit them in the same vol- 
ume with the more impressive scenes of old INIarlowe, Heywood, 
Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others. To show what we have 
slighted, while beyond all proportion we have cried up one or two 
favorite names." Years of loving self-sacrifice went into that volume. 
"Do you remember," said Mary Lamb to her brother, "the brown 
suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried 
shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that 
folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night 
from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it 
for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase?" The 
changes in literary taste produced by this book were slow in appear- 
ance but far-reaching. Incidentally, besides its significance for 
Elizabethans, this work was apparently part of a sudden increase 
in books of selections. In 1804 Campbell declared: "It is a hiatus in 
British Literature that we have no specimens of our best poetry"; 
yet Lamb, at about the time of his own publication, wrote: "Speci- 
mens are becoming fashionable. We have — Specimens of Ancient 

[ 187 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

English Poets, Specimens of Modern English Poets, Specimens of 
Ancient English Prose Writers, without end." 

That this kind of work was "the fittest thing in the world for 
Lamb to manage" we have abundant testimony. The great past was 
more alive for him than the present. "I am out of the world of read- 
ers," he cried a few months after the "Specimens" appeared. "I 
hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new 
books. I gather myself up unto the old things." "I cannot write in 
the modern style, if I try ever so hard," was his defence when Mary 
thought his serenata "a little too old-fashioned in the manner"; 
and "when my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; 
I will write for Antiquity.' " "His soul delighted in communion with 
ancient generations," Procter tells us; "more especially with men 
who had been unjustly forgotten." 

Lamb's work was followed by the lecture courses of Coleridge and 
Hazlitt in London. Of Coleridge's first series in 1808, little has been 
preserved. In the winter of 1811-12 he spoke "on Shakespeare and 
Milton in illustration of the Principles of Poetry, and their appli- 
cation as grounds of Criticism to the most popular works of later 
English Poets, those of the living included." The fragmentary 
records, says J. Dykes Campbell, suffice to show that his audiences 
"probably heard the finest literary criticism which has ever been 
given in English." The popular effect was considerable; and Byron, 
who attended, mentions "Coleridge, who is a sort of rage at pres- 
ent." In 1 81 8 the inspired but unpunctual lecturer had more doubtful 
success introducing his audience to Shakespeare and poetical litera- 
ture, Hazlitt at the same time, occasionally on the same evenings, 
interpreting the English poets. The previous year had seen Hazlitt's 
"Characters of Shakespeare's Plays," and Coleridge's tragi-comedy 
"Zapolya," which was as much like Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" 
as a bad play can be like a good one. In 1820 Hazlitt delivered his 
Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 

The work of Coleridge and Hazlitt differed from that of Lamb 
in two important respects. Unlike him, they either ignored or under- 
rated the minor Elizabethans, and were consistently wise and 
sympathetic only in their handling of the one supreme master. 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

Also, whereas the criticism of Lamb was a strictly indigenous 
product, that of his two friends was strongly tinctured with the 
thought of Germany, where the humanistic interpretation of 
Shakespeare had before 1812 advanced much farther than among 
his own countrymen. Coleridge, during his brief trip to Germany, 
had soaked himself in the thought of Lessing and Kant. While 
delivering his second course of lectures in 181 2 he read the writings 
of A. W. Schlegel, the critical leader of the German Romantic 
School; and his own discourses on Shakespeare are filled with 
parallelisms to that writer. Hazlitt in 181 6, before producing most 
of his own Elizabethan criticism, had reviewed Schlegel on the 
Drama in The Edinburgh Review at great length and with marked 
approval. 

Meanwhile the lectures of those rich in brains were being aided 
by the printing press of one rich in cash. From 1813 to 1822 Sir 
Samuel Egerton Brydges, a would-be poet and a nobleman, but in 
spite of these handicaps a valuable aid to literature, operated his 
private printing establishment, the Lee Priory Press. It produced 
chiefly reprints of rare old books, among them poems of William 
Browne and Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," and so rendered gen- 
uine service to old literature, especially the Elizabethan. 

Hazlitt and Coleridge, obviously, were much influenced by Lamb, 
for so many years the friend of both; and Coleridge reciprocated by 
filling the Elizabethan books of "Elia" with scribbled annotations. 
"Many are those precious MSS. of his . . . legible in my Daniel; 
in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogita- 
tions of the Greville," says Lamb in "The Two Races of Men." 
Hazlitt was also reacted on by one who about the time of his emer- 
gence as a literary critic became the friend of himself and Lamb, 
Bryan Waller Procter. This genial poet had, as a child, breathed 
in the love of Shakespeare from his nurse, a woman fallen from 
better days. Procter tells us that when Hazlitt "was about to write 
his Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth, he knew little or nothing of 
the dramatists of that time, with the exception of Shakespeare. He 
spoke to Charles Lamb, and to myself, who were supposed by many 
to be well acquainted with those ancient writers. I lent him about 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

a dozen volumes, comprehending the finest of the old plays; and 
he then went down to Winterslow Hut, in Wiltshire, and after a stay 
of six weeks came back to London, fully impregnated with the sub- 
ject, with his thoughts fully made up upon it, and with all his lec- 
tures written." 

In 1819 with his "Dramatic Scenes" Procter led the way in the 
new wave of Elizabethan imitations. Two years later he published 
his drama of "Mirandola," which had been acted successfully at 
Covent Garden Theater, with such able Shakespearean actors as 
Kemble and Macready in the leading roles. "Mirandola" is in al- 
most slavish imitation of plays like the "Love's Sacrifice" of John 
Ford, even using "abused" in its long- forgotten Elizabethan mean- 
ing of "deceived." The Prologue, by one of the author's friends, 
after praising the Elizabethans, tells the audience: 

Of late some poets of true mind have writ 
Lines that have relished of the ancient wit; 
To-night, another, — not unknown — yet one 
Who feels that much is to be lost — and won. 
Comes with a few plain words, honestly told. 
Like those his mightier masters spoke of old. 

Remembering how much the ancient dramatists drew from Italy, 
we need not be astonished if the Elizabethan and Italian currents 
often became one. In 1821 it is not at all surprising to find a play 
located in Italy, and one of the characters giving a eulogistic list 
of Italian authors: 

These lines were strung 
By frenzied Tasso whom a princess scorned, 
And these flew forth from Ariosto's quill, 
And these sad Petrarch, who lamented long 
Laura, his love, once writ; and some there were 
Inscribed by great Boccaccio's golden pen. 

If Procter's first play had appeared ten years earlier it would prob- 
ably have been very different. Having no great literary merit to 
preserve it, it may gain an inglorious immortality as a straw showing 
which way the wind blew. 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

Jeffrey in reviewing Bryan Waller Procter's "Sicilian Story" said 
of his work in general: "Mr. Cornwall's style is chiefly moulded, 
and his versification modulated, on the pattern of Shakespeare, 
Marlow, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, He has also copied 
something from Milton and Ben Jonson, and the amorous cavaliers 
of the Usurpation — and then, passing disdainfully over all the inter- 
mediate writers, has flung himself fairly into the arms of Lord 
Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Leigh Hunt. . . . But really 
the materials harmonize very tolerably. . . . The natural bent of 
his genius is more like that of Leigh Hunt than any other author. 
. . . But he has better taste and better judgment." This pretty 
accurate verdict explains why that popular and kind-hearted poet 
will be found scattered through our book like the limbs of Medea's 
children. It also explains why his most prominent role may well be 
played in the present chapter. It was as a reviver of the Elizabethan 
models that he was first welcomed by the public. The Literary 
Gazette said that his "Dramatic Scenes" "give us the impression of 
a mind eminently rich in its knowledge of the finest era of the Eng- 
lish mind." Leigh Hunt's Examiner found the author "evidently 
well acquainted with our old dramatists; but he writes after them 
like a true disciple, not at all like a servile imitator." In the words 
of Blackwood's, "the shade of Massinger himself might with 
pleasure hail his appearance in the world of imagination." Six of his 
brief "Dramatic Scenes" appeared in 1819, and the rest were 
written soon after, though not published for years. Like the dia- 
logues of Landor or the work of his French contemporary Vitet, 
they give a single dramatic hour, not a character development; and 
in spite of lax run-on lines they still read better than the author's 
other work. In "Ludovico Sforza," which is prefaced by a quotation 
from Webster, one can hear the echo of that somber genius through 
Isabella's words over her dead victim: 

I could grieve, almost, 
To see his ghastly stare. His eye is vague ; 
Is motionless. How like those shapes he grows. 
That sit in stony whiteness over tombs. 
Memorials of their cold inhabitants. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Juan like Othello kills an innocent wife in erring jealousy and then 
stabs himself. The quotations prefixed to the different "scenes" 
represent, besides Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Middleton. It was probably from 
Ford that ''The Broken Heart" borrowed its title. In comparing 
these rather able fragments with the far "too lovey" narrative 
poems, one cannot help wishing that Procter had lived up to his 
own words: 

He who feeds 
Upon Shakespearean pastures never needs 
The humbler food which springs from plains below. 

Shelley's "Cenci," though original and Italian in its underlying 
conception, is full of Shakespearean mannerisms and echoes, which 
he may or may not have caught in the "Cockney" days from 
Procter, Lamb, and Hazlitt. Act IV especially is redolent of "Mac- 
beth." In the much inferior dramatic fragment "Charles the First," 
the ghastly joking of Archy, the Court Fool, is a connecting link 
between Webster and Shelley's admirer Beddoes. Yet this tendency 
was only a passing ripple across the mind that conceived the 
"Prometheus." Shelley's reading during this period, as shown by 
the notes of his widow, was mainly Greek, and included hardly any 
of Shakespeare's fellow tragedians. 

Keats's friend, Charles Armitage Brown, brought out a book, 
though not a very valuable one, entitled: "Shakespeare's Auto- 
biographical Poems. Being his Sonnets Clearly developed; with his 
Characters drawn chiefly from his Works." The author of "Endym- 
ion" himself was temporarily affected, and is thought to have bor- 
rowed in his long poem from Lyly's "Endimion," Drayton's "Man 
in the Moon," and poems of Fletcher, William Browne, and Ben 
Jonson. In 1824 Charles Wells, also the friend of Keats, and very 
probably the Elizabethan disciple of Lamb, Procter, and Hazlitt, 
published under an assumed name "Joseph and his Brethren." It 
drew its plot from the Bible, one of the few historical fields neg- 
lected by the great Elizabethan dramatists; but diction, blank verse, 
and character conception are obviously reminiscent of Peele, Mar- 

[ 192 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

lowe, and Shakespeare. There are splendid word pictures in it, yet 
as a whole it is rather heavy reading; and the utter neglect shown 
by the public, though unjust, was not unnatural. The rich Oriental 
atmosphere reminds one of Gautier's "Romance of a Mummy," as 
well as of descriptions in Marlowe's "Tamburlaine." 

Then came the honoured elders of the land, 
Whose sombre habits answered to their age, 
Wove of the ancient woof which sibyls love; — 
Their faces as old chronicles were mapped 
And furrowed with an age of mystic thought; 
Their snowy hair that mingled with their beards 
Flowed o'er their shadowy forms in many a fold. 
Covering their garments like a silver cloud 
As moonlight o'er some darksome sepulchre. . . . 
Each one was followed by his sacred charge. 
In silver cradles worked with lotus flowers. 
Wherein were shrined with reverential awe 
Emblems of Egypt since her antique days 
(As on her brazen pillars it is writ) 
Coeval with creation's misty age. 

Meanwhile a more somber and powerful genius was at work, the 
poet Beddoes. He had several literary affiliations, but they were all 
of the most tenuous kind. His mother was the sister of Maria Edge- 
worth. His father, a famous physician, had been somewhat ac- 
quainted with the poets of the Bristol Eddy. He himself in his best 
creative period worshiped Shelley from afar, was one of the first 
to discover the greatness of that uncomprehended giant, and to 
forward the posthumous publication of his works. About 1823 he 
at least met Procter and corresponded with him later. Yet he came 
closely in touch with no literary man or literary group. Lonely as an 
asteroid in Chaos, he followed his eccentric orbit, the fragment of 
a greater poetical world that might have been. As his love and wide 
knowledge of the Elizabethan dramatists was formed in schoolboy 
days independently of all outside influences, it is impossible to say 
how far the laudatory reviews which his fellow Elizabethan dis- 
ciples, Procter and Darley, gave to his early "Brides' Tragedy," 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

encouraged him in the gloomy Websterian character of his later 
masterpiece. In 1821 he published the worthless "Improvisatore" 
and immature but highly poetical "Brides' Tragedy." Then he 
expatriated himself, body and soul, became an eccentric German 
physician, and dying in the middle of the nineteenth century left his 
one great work, "Death's Jestbook," to be published by his friends. 
It had been finished by 1829, and, though later revised, may justly 
be grouped with the plays before 1830. Perhaps the fact that he 
wrote it almost wholly in Germany influenced Beddoes in his choice 
of a German medieval theme. 

Beddoes realized perfectly both the opportunities and limitations 
in this field of Elizabethan imitation. "The man who is to awaken 
the drama," he said, "must be a bold trampling fellow — no creeper 
into worm-holes — no reviver even, however good. These reanima- 
tions are vampire cold. Such ghosts as Marlowe, Webster, etc., are 
better dramatists, better poets, I daresay, than any contemporary 
of ours, but they are ghosts — the worm is in their pages — and we 
want to see something that our great grandsires did not know. . . . 
Just now the drama is a haunted ruin." But growing melancholy or 
misdirected powers seem to have raised an invisible barrier between 
the poet and the goal which he clearly visioned; he became "a 
reviver" "however good." None the less in that limited field he 
reigns supreme, a master of sepulchral atmosphere and sonorous 
blank verse. Unity of action he has none, but the unity of mood is 
perfect. And in that mood there is an element that is not primarily 
Elizabethan but belongs rather to the medieval or Oriental ascetic. 
The bold dramatists of good Queen Bess generally considered death 
an evil, to be faced but not sought. Beddoes considers it the one 
blessing in an evil world, the calm Nirvanah of the sepulcher. At 
eighteen he made a desolate mother cry: 

Men call him Death, but Comfort is his name; 

and the same mournfully healing thesis is that of "Death's Jest- 
book." To die is 

The right of the deserving good old man 
To rest, his cheerful labor being done. 

[ 194 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 
The young girl Sibyl loves flowers 

because these brief visitors to us 
Rise yearly from the neighborhood of the dead, 
To show us how far fairer and more lovely 
Their world is. 



The ghosts 



are afraid 
They would envy our delight, 
In our graves by glow-worm night. 



The spectre Wolfram says that , 

The dead are ever good and innocent, 
And love the living; 

and he reproaches Duke Melveric for daring 

to call up into life, 
And the unholy world's forbidden sunlight. 
Out of his grave him who reposed softly. 

Such an attitude might easily be suggested by Webster but is more 
hungry for death than he; longs for it like the German Romantiker 
Novalis, in whose country, perhaps over whose pages, it was 
written.* 

Only one degree less isolated than Beddoes was George Darley, 
a young Irishman, desocialized in the midst of thousands by an 
unfortunate stammer and a poetic temperament, "a hermit in the 
center of London." Yet as a contributor to The London Magazine, 
and the friend of Lamb, he had become socially related to the 

♦Another close parallel to Beddoes's mood is found in his great Italian contem- 
porary Leopardi, who, while "Death's Jestbook" was under revision, wrote in 1834: 
"Now, I envy neither fools, nor the wise, the great, the small, the weak, the powerful. 
I envy the dead, and with them alone would I exchange my lot. Every pleasurable 
fancy, every thought of the future that comes to me in my solitude, and with which 
I pass away the time, is allied with the thought of death from which it is inseparable. 
And in this longing, neither the remembrance of my childish dreams, nor the thought 
of having lived in vain, disturbs me any more as formerly. When death comes to me, 
I shall die as peacefully and contentedly as if it were the only thing for which I had 
ever wished in the world. This is the sole prospect that reconciles me to Destiny." 
"Dialogue Between Tristano and a Friend" (Edwardes's translation). 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Elizabethan disciples long before he wrote his best work "Sylvia, 
or the May Queen" (1827). This is a rambling poetical drama, full 
of romantic impossibilities; yet well furnished with poetry too. It 
has a general spirit akin partly to Shakespeare's "Midsummer 
Night's Dream" and partly to "The Faithful Shepherdess" of 
Fletcher, whose editor Darley later became. In the same year 
Thomas Hood, also one of the London Magazine writers, published 
his "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," a fanciful narrative poem, 
written, as he tells us in the dedicatory letter to Lamb, "to cele- 
brate, by an allegory, that immortality which Shakespeare has con- 
ferred on the Fairy mythology by his 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' " 
We shall mention elsewhere Thomas Wade, who dramatized the 
story of patient Griselda from the Italian as Dekker and his col- 
laborators had done before. His manuscript play of "Henry II," 
which was described by Mr. Buxton Forman as "Elizabethan but 
not imitative," and his "Jew of Arragon" come about 1830 and lie 
on the utmost limits of our field. The latter drama proved too pro- 
Hebraic for the patience of its audience, and may be considered as 
a reaction against Shylock and Marlowe's "Jew of Malta." 

While these Elizabethan imitations were being written, several of 
the Elizabethans themselves were appearing for the first time in 
scholarly editions, the work of the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Born in 
the year of the "Lyrical Ballads," he came to London about 1827, 
and within six years thereafter had edited the dramas of Peele, 
Greene, Webster, and Shirley, followed later by others of that great 
brotherhood. The debt of Elizabethan scholarship to Dyce and to 
the later labors of Cowden Clarke needs no comment. 

It will be seen that there was a fairly continuous chain of social 
relationships between the different Elizabethan imitators and 
scholars. To some extent, though exactly how far we cannot tell, 
the torch was passed from hand to hand. The Elizabethan enthu- 
siasm was no great popular wave as the medieval and Oriental had 
been, but the cult of a few comparatively obscure and uninfiuential 
men, who encouraged each other and found little encouragement 
elsewhere. "What is the amount even of Shakespeare's fame?" 
demanded Hazlitt in 18 17. "That, in that very country which boasts 

[ 196 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

his genius and his birth, perhaps not one person in ten has ever 
heard of his name, or read a syllable of his writings!" With due 
allowance for Hazlitt's love of pugnacious hyperbole, one must feel 
the weight of such a statement. By 1822 Byron scents a change in 
the air, and alludes cynically to 

Shakespeare, who just now is much in fashion; 

but at that very time Hazlitt was recording again the neglect of the 
other Elizabethans: "Who reads Deckar now? Or if by chance any 
one awakes the strings of that ancient lyre, and starts with delight 
as they yield wild, broken music, is he not accused of envy to the 
living Muse? What would a linen draper from Holborn think, if 
I were to ask him after the clerk of St. Andrews, the immortal, the 
forgotten Webster? His name and his works are no more heard of." 
Two years later, while Beddoes was in the midst of his grim master- 
piece, and Procter's work was ending and Barley's beginning, 
Hazlitt renews the charge: "Even well-informed people among us 
hardly know the difference between Otway and Shakespeare; and 
if a person has a fancy for any of our elder classics, he may have 
it to himself for what the public cares." 

Another significant fact is that the men connected with the 
Elizabethan current led a life analogous to that of the Elizabethans 
themselves. Lamb, Hazlitt, Cowden Clarke, Dyce, Hood, Darley, 
Wells, like Webster, Decker, Fletcher, and Massinger, were by 
birth or adoption Londoners. Like their great predecessors, they 
lived in a respectable but unconventional literary bohemia. They 
stood for the most poetical side of town life, as Wordsworth, Burns, 
and Scott did for that of the frontiers. The poetry of unnumbered 
human countenances, of constant incidents pathetic or laughable, 
was their daily landscape. They might have answered to Words- 
worth (and Lamb did practically answer so) : 

To me the meanest face that mourns can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

Procter's favorite method was to compose when alone in a crowd; 
and, as we learn from Miss Martineau, "he declared that he did 

[ 197 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

his best when walking London streets." Lamb has left it on record 
that he "often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy 
at so much life." Even Coleridge during most of his Shakespearean 
period was a resident near London. These writers could sympathize 
beyond other men with the great bygone drama because they had 
learned to sympathize first with the life that had produced it. If 
they were weak in that very humanism and character analysis in 
which Decker and Middleton excelled, that was partly the fault of 
their age. Their sympathy turned naturally toward the great bygone 
poets who had been like themselves city men and of their own 
manner of life, as Byron and Rogers turned to the bygone poets of 
the court and salon, as Wordsworth turned to his rural forerunners, 
Thomson and Dyer. One of the chief city influences which was open 
to them daily, and to Wordsworth so rarely, was the theater itself. 
There were giants on the stage in those days. Young Cowden Clarke 
tells us of his eager walks to see Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth and 
Queen Constance, Miss O'Neil as Juliet, John Kemble as Coriolanus 
or Brutus, Booth as lago, and Edmund Kean as Othello, Lear, 
Hamlet, Richard III, Shylock, and Massinger's Sir Giles Over- 
reach. "Forty or fifty years ago," wrote Leigh Hunt in 1850, "people 
of all times of life were much greater playgoers than they are now"; 
and thus the theater gave new life to that which had earlier made 
it live. 

If the plays of the Elizabethan imitators are bracketed with those 
of Byron and Shelley, with "Otho the Great" by Keats and Brown, 
and Keats's fragment of "King Stephen," one realizes what an out- 
burst of closet drama there was in the decade following 181 6. Never 
before in the history of English literature had so much of literary 
merit taken that form in so short a time. For good or ill, that was 
one of the bequests which the later romantic generation left to 
posterity. 

II 

If the Elizabethan tradition ran tangent to the "Cockney" group, 
the authors of The London Magazine formed an overlapping circle 
to it with a common chord. Hazlitt, Lamb, Reynolds, and Procter 

[ 198 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

were connected with both of these closely related eddies, the first 
of which disintegrated almost simultaneously with the formation 
of the latter. The career of The London Magazine was painfully 
brief, from 1820 to 1829, and during the last half of that decade 
it was barren enough ; but for the first few years of its being it was 
probably richer in good authors and enduring literature than any 
other English magazine has been before or since. It was also 
mainly the product of a literary group of London acquaintances, 
even if these writers did not form quite so definite an eddy as the 
''Cockneys." 

The first editor, the man who dedicated its cornerstone to litera- 
ture, was John Scott, a brilliant journalist of Scotch birth and 
London training. His career was unfortunately brief. He had been 
in various ways connected with the circle of Leigh Hunt, and when 
editor of a former paper, The Champion, had sometimes played 
the part of ally to The Examiner. Consequently it is easy to under- 
stand why he resented the Z articles in Blackwood's against the 
"Cockneys," how he was drawn into a quarrel with Lockhart, and 
finally into a duel with Lockhart's friend Christie. Scott was mor- 
tally wounded February 16, 1821, and died eleven days later. 
There is a touch of dramatic irony in the fact that, though he died 
in the attempt to avenge Hunt and Keats, the latter apparently did 
not like him. Scott is described by his contemporary Talfourd as 
"a critic of remarkable candour, eloquence, and discrimination, un- 
fettered by the dogmas of contending schools of poetry and art; 
apt to discern the good and beautiful in all . . . more fit to preside 
over a little commonwealth of authors than to hold a despotic rule 
over subject contributors." The impetus which he gave the new 
magazine continued for some time after his death but was gradually 
lost under his less competent successors. 

Before his death he had already gathered around him a knot of 
exceedingly able writers. One of these was Henry Cary, the trans- 
lator of Dante, whose son and biographer has given us a vivid 
picture of the social life that underlay the literary product of the 
magazine: "My father's connection with the London Magazine 
made him acquainted with several of our ablest popular writers; 

[ 199 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

such as Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Procter, Allan Cunning- 
ham, Carlyle, Hood, Darley, and John Clare, the poet. With two 
of these. Lamb and Darley, he contracted a cordial intimacy and 
friendship, which was terminated only by death. Most of these he 
met at the table of Mr. Taylor, the publisher, and when once brought 
together, they not unfrequently met at the house of one or [sic] 
other of the number. At the first of these Magazine dinners, as they 
were called, held at Mr. Cary's own house, I remember that, among 
others. Lamb, Kelley, the farce-writer, and Clare were present. 
The conversation, which never flagged, consisted of a strange 
mixture of learning, wit, and puns, bad and good. ... To a 
looker-on, as I was, the most interesting of the party was the peasant 
Clare. He was dressed in a labourer's holiday suit. The punsters 
evidently alarmed him; but he listened with the deepest attention 
to his host."* 

With the exception of Kelley, all of the writers mentioned above 
contributed to the London. De Quincey had transferred his home 
from the Lakes to the metropolis just as the magazine was getting 
under way, and published in its pages in 182 1 his "Confessions of 
an English Opium Eater." Allan Cunningham was a minor Scotch 
author, who in his native country had seen Burns lying dead, sought 
out the friendship of the Ettrick Shepherd, and then come to Lon- 
don in early manhood to push his fortunes. His manliness was 
greater than his genius, and most of his poetry now is forgotten; 
but his acquaintances generally had a warm spot in their hearts for 
"honest Allan." Thomas Hood was from the beginning one of the 
leading spirits of the magazine, and after Scott's death assumed 
part of the editorial responsibility. Hood apparently became ac- 
quainted with Reynolds through their joint work on the London. 
They were for some time warm friends and in 1825 became 
brothers-in-law; but at about the time when the magazine first 
began to decline they quarreled and drifted apart, for reasons not 
clearly known. John Clare was a peasant poet of Northamptonshire, 
poor as Burns in financial resources and far poorer in physical 

*A full account of these dinners, too long for quotation, is given in Hood's 
"Literary Reminiscences," No. IV. 

[ 200 ] 



THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

strength, that invaluable asset for the penniless. Taylor, of the firm 
of Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of The London Magazine, 
became his friend and patron, and published several volumes of 
his poems. Clare lived in the country, but made a number of short 
trips to London, where he met most of the magazine group and 
became the friend of Cunningham. 

Another contributor of verse to the London, like Clare in his 
poetic mood, his lovableness, and his irresponsibility, though dif- 
ferent enough in birth and training, was Hartley Coleridge. After 
his unfortunate experiences as an undergraduate at Oxford, his 
brother tells us that he "remained in London and the neighborhood 
about two years . . . writing, from time to time, small pieces for 
the London Magazine." It does not appear, however, that he saw 
much of the other contributors, unless it was Lamb, his father's 
friend. A writer who left no enduring work but who was a promi- 
nent figure among the set, was Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, de- 
scribed by Talfourd as a young man, "with a sort of undress military 
air, and the conversation of a smart, lively, clever, heartless, volup- 
tuous coxcomb." He is interesting to us now only because Lamb 
overrated him. Another contributor, who was the friendly corre- 
spondent of Lamb, but otherwise not connected socially with the 
writers for the London, was Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. His 
friendship for Lamb was due to the magazine. In its pages he had 
read the "Essays of Elia"; and, thinking the treatment of the 
Quakers therein hardly fair, he had written to the author in gentle 
remonstrance. Among other contributors were Thomas Noon Tal- 
fourd and Horace Smith. Some of these men wrote in the London 
under their own names, others anonymously, others under pseudo- 
nyms. J. H. Reynolds signed himself "Edward Herbert"; Wain- 
wright was "Janus Weathercock"; Charles Dilke used the pen 
name of "Thurma"; and Lamb made the nom de plume of "Elia" 
immortal. 

That The London Magazine was not merely a vehicle for publi- 
cation but also an inspirational force, a creator of new authors, is 
shown in the case of De Quincey. He had reached the age of thirty- 
six without publishing, and apparently without writing anything 

[ 201 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

of merit. Had the editorial staff not suggested to him his "Confes- 
sions," he might never have written them, and might never have 
embarked on his long career as a periodical writer. His biographer 
Japp tells us that at the periodical after-dinner meetings which 
Taylor and Hessey held with their contributors "as was natural, 
De Quincey's experiences due to opium were often spoken of. This 
at length led to his being asked to write an account of these. The 
result was the famous 'Confessions,' which produced an immediate 
effect, and placed De Quincey in the front rank of literary men 
then living." Apparently these "Confessions" owed nothing to the 
literary environment of the Lake district, although many of the 
scenes which they describe had happened there; the entire work 
was written in the author's city lodgings. "Meantime I am again 
in London," it tells us, "and again I pace the terraces of Oxford 
Street by night." It was the London also which first launched Tom 
Hood on the sea of literature. He was working for a living as an 
engraver and furtively dreaming of poetry on which he did not 
dare to spend his time when, after the death of John Scott, he was 
offered the position of sub-editor by the new proprietors of the 
magazine, who were his friends. Hood himself described this event 
as one "which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and 
make the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for 
life. ... To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the 
bowl had at last found its natural bias." 

If the magazine did not quite so definitely create Lamb as an 
author, it at least helped him mature his powers as he had never 
done before. For a quarter of a century he had been experimenting 
with poetry, drama, and essay-writing without making a decided 
success in any of these fields. It is by his "Essays of Elia," his part 
in the London, that he holds his enduring niche in our literature. 
Hazlitt introduced him to John Scott, who invited him to contribute 
occasional essays, and thereby made him immortal. 

As for John Clare, his debt to the London group as a group was 
less; but it is a question whether he would ever have emerged into 
poethood without the help of the publisher Taylor. In 1819, when 
Clare as yet had published nothing, a common friend sent a bundle 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

of his MSS. poems to the London bookmaker. Taylor at the time 
was rolling over plans for the yet unborn London Magazine, and felt 
that the discovery of an English Burns or another Bloomfield among 
the poor would have a sensational character favorable for the pro- 
motion of new enterprises. His motives were far from being wholly 
praiseworthy; but they led to the launching of Clare as a poet. 
Taylor published his first volume of verse in 1820, and drummed 
up sales and reviews for the new "prodigy" by every means in his 
power. The first number of The London Magazine contained a long 
puff for the new protege, "Some account of John Clare, an agri- 
cultural laborer and poet." Influence was used on The Quarterly, 
which published a highly favorable review; and four editions of 
the poems were called for in swift succession. Later on Taylor 
treated Clare rather badly; and subsequent volumes of verse fell 
off in popularity as they improved in quality; but the influence of 
Taylor and the London on Clare's career is beyond question. The 
brief hour of popularity gave the half-starved, uneducated, pottering 
farm hand faith in himself; and in a crisis of want and despair the 
smoking flax of poetry was not quenched. 

It seems strange to bracket with this unlettered peasant a wealthy, 
proud and excessively independent scholar; but Walter Savage 
Landor also found a publisher in Taylor after several members of 
the trade had rejected his MSS. His first "Imaginary Conversations" 
were printed in 1824; and his dialogue between Southey and Porson 
was published some months earlier — as a "feeler" for the public — in 
The London Magazine. No such obvious debt can be claimed, per- 
haps, for Darley, Cunningham, Barton, and Hartley Coleridge, yet 
the latter made his first venture in that periodical, and the con- 
nection of the others marked the beginning of their best creative 
period. 

The magazine poetry of Barton, Clare, and Hartley Coleridge, 
like all their verse, is marked by a sincere and childlike simplicity. 
Barton in spite of creaking lines, tame moralizings, and weak poeti- 
cal inversions, gives consistently the impression of a genuine, 
lovable, and poetical spirit. "His muse may be said to possess a 
lovely Quaker countenance," said his friendly reviewer in the 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

London, "... a Venus in a poke-bonnet." In the poems of Clare, 
obvious but beautiful thoughts and emotions gleam through the 
limpid, childlike language like pebbles through his own rural brooks. 

The woodbines, fresh with morning hours, 

Are what I love to see; 
The ivy spreading darksom bowers, 

Is where I love to be; 
Left there, as when a boy, to lie 

And talk to flower and tree, 
And fancy, in my ecstasy. 

Their silence answers me. 

In Hartley Coleridge's sonnets to R. S. Jameson it is easy to trace 
the influence of his early associate and father's friend, Wordsworth : 

When we were idlers with the loitering rills, 

The need of human love we little noted; 

Our love was Nature; and the peace that floated 
On the white mist, and slept upon the hills. 
To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills. . . . 
But now I find how dear thou wert to me; 

That, man is more than half of Nature's treasure. 

There is a more conscious and ornate style in the verse contribu- 
tions of Hood and Cunningham, each of whom printed at least one 
masterly poem in the magazine, Hood's "Lycus the Centaur" and 
Cunningham's "A wet sheet and a flowing sea." Hood's "Fair Ines" 
has a lingering touch of medieval pageantry: 

I saw thee, lovely Ines, 

Descend along the shore, 
With bands of noble gentlemen. 

And banners waved before. 

The versatility of this metrical Proteus had already shown itself 
in "Faithless Sally Brown," that wild orgy of puns, which appeared 
in the London for March, 1822. 

The London Magazine began at a time when cosmopolitan forces 
were strongly at work in literature and thought, when the reaction 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

after tJie Napoleonic wars had had time to become effective. The 
editors of the London foresaw the advantages of this tendency and 
were eager to promote it. In the Prospectus prefixed to their first 
number they said: "To Foreign Criticism, therefore, and Foreign 
Literature generally, as well as to the theories and progress of the 
Fine Arts in the various National Schools of Europe, we shall pay 
an attention which has not been hitherto given to them in any 
similar publication." This promise was kept. The critical and 
scholarly articles in the magazine handle the literature of the 
ancient Greek and Goth, of remote or modern periods, or both, in 
Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, and little-known 
Serbia. These articles in their sum total have a panoramic effect 
not without its appeal to the imagination even in our own more 
learned age. Gary's chief work at this time was his discussion and 
translation of the old French poets. When we add the sympathy 
and fairness of the London's reviews on contemporary poetry, we 
realize that much of the magazine which has no enduring character 
as literature represented nevertheless a sturdy effort in the literary 
and intellectual cause. 

The fiction of the magazine includes a number of highly romantic 
tales, if by "romantic" we mean a mixture of sentimentalism with 
either supernatural incidents or remote ages. Perhaps the best of 
these is George Barley's "Lilian of the Vale." In this a feverish and 
poetical young man falls in love with a beautiful young female in 
a retired valley; but she vanishes, leaving him unable to decide 
whether she was woman, spirit, or delirious dream. There is also 
prose of a much more substantial type, as, for example, De Quincey's 
articles on economics and education. 

The two enduring glories of the magazine, however, are the 
"Confessions" and the "Essays of Elia." They were both the master- 
pieces of lifelong magazine writers, one of whom was just entering 
on his career, the other reaching its culmination. The "Confessions" 
are probably the result of a single and genuine aim; without any 
great moral nobility they are intellectually sincere. But, judged less 
by the way they came from the writer's brain than by the way in 
which they impinged on the reader's, they sounded with unconscious 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

versatility the various chords of contemporary tendencies. The 
author felt nervously their likeness as Rousseauistic confessions to 
"French literature or to that part of the German which is tainted 
with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French." While 
the opium-eater's revelation was still freshly before the public, an 
article in Blackwood's began: "This in confessedly the age of con- 
fession." De Quincey makes his appeal to the period's childlike and 
none too scientific enthusiasm about science. "I, who . . . have 
conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort 
of galvanic battery, — and have, for the general benefit of the world, 
inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of eight hundred 
drops of laudanum per day." For the romantic lover of remote ages 
there are gorgeous, association-haunted passages: "At night, when 
I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful 
pomp; friezes of never ending stories, that to my feelings were as 
sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before 
Oedipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis." We are told that 
some of the pictures of Piranesi "represented vast Gothic halls." 
The Orientalizing disciple of "Vathek" and "Abydos" enjoys read- 
ing that "the mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, 
histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that to me the vast 
age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the 
individual." Those who have read that wild "Day of Judgment" 
which forms the close for every one of Blake's longer symbolical 
poems will feel as if De Quincey in the intoxication of opium had 
seen the same vision and was describing it. "The morning was come 
of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, 
then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread 
extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where — somehow, I knew not 
how — a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting, — was evolving 
like a great drama, or piece of music." It is easy to see why the 
"Confessions" took well with the public. On the one hand they 
sounded all the stops of powerful but failing romantic tastes; on 
the other, as scientific autobiography, they did not jar against 
incipient realism. 

Similarly, though in a very different manner, Lamb's "Essays of 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

Elia" blend the stock notes of the romantic generation with others 
not then current, with echoes from the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries and anticipations of later novelists. He views the old 
South-sea House with Ossianic eyes, finds in it "a desolation some- 
thing like Balclutha's," and thrills as Byron or Chateaubriand might 
at the fascination of far-off countries, "dusty maps of Mexico, dim 
as dreams." That wildly Gothic and medieval poem of his friend 
Hood, "The Haunted House," might claim a subdued and modest 

cousin in his "Blakesmoor in H shire." "I do not know a pleasure 

more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments 
of some fine old family mansion," he tells us, and names with awe 
the "tattered and diminished 'scutcheon that hung upon the time- 
worn walls of thy princely stairs, BLAKESMOOR. ... Its fading 
rags and colors cobweb-stained told that its subject was of two 
centuries back." His "Complaint of the Decay of Beggars" runs 
parallel in thought to "The Old Cumberland Beggar" of his former 
friend Wordsworth. We suspect that his essay on chimney-sweepers 
owed something to the poetry on chimney-sweeps by Blake, poetry 
which he had read some years before. Lamb describes them as 
"tender novices . . . with their little professional notes sounding 
like the peep peep of a young sparrow . . . poor blots — innocent 
blacknesses"; thereby touching the same sympathetic chord as 

A little black thing among the snow, 
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe! 

Like Blake and Wordsworth both he considers the child as the 
unruined exponent of the poetical mood. "Ye inexplicable half 
understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the pre- 
ternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make 
ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me — to my 
childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw 
Gods as 'old men covered with a mantle,' walking upon the earth. 
Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies 
and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood, 
there will, forever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome super- 
stition. ... In that little Goshen there will be light, when the 

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P 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and mate- 
riality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, 
shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings 
totally to fly the earth." His essays, coming in the "age of confes- 
sion," are full of personal history, none the less autobiographical 
because often disguised and modestly suppressed. Lamb had little 
affinity with either the national antiquarianism of Scott or the fan- 
tastic medievalism of Keats and Coleridge; he lived in the present 
and wrote of it; yet over it he repeatedly diffuses an atmosphere of 
antique glamour. He tells us himself that his essays are "pranked 
in an affected array of antique modes and phrases"; and describes 
one of them as "some half forgotten humors of some old clerks 
defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay." 
"What an antique air had the now almost effaced sundials, with 
their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they 
measured." That romantic love of past years and old associations 
which at times had proved wildly intoxicating and at others unspeak- 
ably insipid, here becomes mellowed like rare old wine. "Antiquity! 
thou wondrous charm," he cries, "what art thou that, being nothing, 
art everything! . . . What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or 
what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same 
idolatry with which we forever revert! The mighty future is as 
nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!" 
This was said at Oxford, that seminary of medieval poetry from 
the days of Tom Warton down. To such an extent Lamb was the 
child of his age. If in many other ways he was not, that fact simply 
illustrates the old truth that great literature is colored but not 
created by passing changes of taste. 

The two anni mirabiles of The London Magazine were 1821 and 
1822. After that it began to fall off, and from the end of 1824 on 
dragged along a posthumous existence of no concern to literature. 
The letters of Lamb to Bernard Barton during this period sound 
like a dirge. May, 1823: "I cannot but think the London drags 
heavily. I miss Janus. And O how it misses Hazlitt! Procter too is 
affronted (as Janus has been) with their abominable curtailment 
of his things." September, 1823: "The London, I fear, falls off. — I 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat." February, 1825: 
"Our 2d No. is all trash. What are T. and H. about? . . . Why did 
poor Scott die? There was comfort in writing with such associates 
as were his little band of Scribblers, some gone away, some affronted 
away, and I am left as the solitary widow looking for water cresses." 
Lamb was loath to give up the London, of which he truly said: "I 
used up all my best thoughts in that publication"; but at last it 
became too soulless even for him. In August, 1825, his last con- 
tribution to the magazine was printed; and in that same month he 
wrote to Barton: "Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a 
dead weight. ... I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like 
Xtian with light and merry shoulders." From that hour, though the 
magazine ran four years longer, no mention of it occurs in Lamb's 
correspondence. 

A word may be said here about non-periodical work by authors 
of this group. That of some has already been discussed; that of 
others, such as Talfourd and Hartley Coleridge, belongs mainly to 
a period after 1830. Allan Cunningham in 1822 published his drama 
"Sir Marmaduke Maxwell," and had written his narrative poem, 
"The Maid of Elvar," by 1819, though it was not published until 
1833. Scott praised in "Sir Marmaduke" the supernatural element, 
which to any one but an early nineteenth-century Scotchman ap- 
pears rather crude; and Wordsworth expressed approval for the 
trailing Spenserian stanzas of "The Maid of Elvar." Few moderns, 
we suspect, could find anything of interest in either save through 
their connection with the medieval and Gothic currents of taste. 
"Honest Allan's" fugitive lyrics in the London have far greater 
permanent value than his more ambitious attempts. 

John Clare published the bulk of his poetry between 1820 and 
1827. What he owed to the London group was encouragement, 
rather than a particular type of inspiration. This last came to him 
mainly from his rural surroundings, which were so unlike those of 
Hazlitt, Procter, and Lamb. 

I found the poems in the fields, 
And only wrote them down. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

As far as he was consciously the disciple of a literary tradition, it. 
was that of the nature poets, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and 
Crabbe, all of whose poems formed part of his scanty library as 
early as 1821, Like his city acquaintances, however, he "had a 
fondness for the poetry of the time of Elizabeth," which showed 
itself especially in metrical details, and in which they must have 
encouraged him. Few men have been more poetical in their moods 
than Clare, though his work is a mournful proof that moods alone, 
without strength of character and commanding intellect, cannot 
become supremely great. 

If Clare's poems were those of the fields. Hood's were those of 
the town. The verse which he poured out so plentifully during the 
third decade of the century was mainly humorous, whims, parodies, 
and burlesques. All the literary stock-in-trade of the age is passed 
over with good-natured ridicule: the Oriental tale, the medieval 
legend, the ballad, the fairy tale, the ghost story. In "Faithless Sally 
Brown" and "Faithless Nelly Gray" the torch of the arch-punster 
passes into his hands from those of Lamb, whose fondness for 
verbal quibbles had been fed for years by the example of his beloved 
Elizabethans. Little of this humorous verse, readable as it is, has 
much enduring value; but it sold well, which explains why it was 
written; and Hood during these years was, Cunningham tells us, 
"better known to the world as a dexterous punster than as a true 
poet." This yielding of the poet to the popular demand was eyed 
askance by some of his friends; and Hartley Coleridge wrote to 
him in protest: "In whatever you attempt you excel. Then why not 
exert your best and noblest talent, as well as that wit, which I would 
never wish to be dominant." A short time previous Hood had pub- 
lished his dramatic and somber poem, "The Dream of Eugene 
Aram"; but aside from this and a few of his earlier contributions 
to the London he almost consistently before 1830 wore the cap and 
bells. His most "romantic" poem, "The Haunted House," with its 
unearthly atmosphere and its motto from Wordsworth's "Hart-leap 
Well," was first printed in Hood's Magazine in 1844, his "Bridge 
of Sighs" and "Song of the Shirt" appearing at about the same time. 

Of the four professional magazine writers of the period who have 

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THE ELIZABETHAN CURRENT 

made lasting reputations through their work in that field, Lamb, 
Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Hood, all were connected with The London 
Magazine. Two of these men, Hood and De Quincey, after their 
London novitiate, edited or contributed to various other periodicals. 
The London encouraged the genius of its children, and had a stimu- 
lating effect on later periodical literature; but its brief and incon- 
sistent career is melancholy proof that the best literary art is not 
compatible with the financial success of a magazine. 



[ 211 ] 



CHAPTER X 

The Expatriated Poets and the Italian Movement in 

Poetry 

The history of English poetry is largely one of cross fertilization; 
and no foreign literature has enriched what was best in it more than 
the Italian. Chaucer owed much to it. Wyatt and Surrey brought 
the sonnet from it into English verse. The debt of Shakespeare and 
his fellow dramatists, both in general spirit and in plots of plays, 
would fill an enormous volume. Milton when young traveled in Italy, 
and is said to have taken the first idea of his great epic from a crude 
Italian play. 

After the Restoration of Charles II the Italian influence in poetry 
declined, and from the time of Pope became very small indeed. 
Until 1750 or 1760 the chief foreign coloring was from France. 
After that the intellect of Great Britain itself became the seminal 
mind of Europe, and for half a century scattered the seeds of 
"Ossian," "The Night Thoughts," Thomson and Gray broadcast 
on the continent. The importation from Germany was in many ways 
ill guided and ill fated; all the Scotch authors were essentially in- 
digenous products; and such foreign influences as worked on Words- 
worth, Southey or Coleridge were French or Teutonic. From 1700 
to 1 81 6 one finds woefully few traces of that literary Gulf Stream 
from the Mediterranean which had warmed the age of Elizabeth 
into poetry. 

That this should have been true through the insulated eighteenth 
century is not surprising, but one might have expected the new tide 
earlier in the nineteenth. Travel conditions probably had something 
to do with the delay. In Shakespeare's day hundreds of young men 
were making the grand tour of Italy at the very time when the 

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THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

Italian coloring was so marked in their poetry. Between 1786 and 
1803, while the German wave was gathering and subsiding, William 
Taylor of Norwich, Ann Radcliffe, Matt Lewis, Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, Campbell, Crabb Robinson, and we know not how many other 
English men of letters, visited Germany. During the opening years 
of the nineteenth century the disrupted state of Italy and the power 
of Napoleon there tended to discourage British travelers. Byron did 
not visit it in the journey that produced the first two cantos of 
"Childe Harold"; and Coleridge, when in Rome, practically fled 
for his life from the suspicion of Bonaparte. The Italian strain in 
English poetry became marked very soon after Waterloo. 

In the autumn of 181 6 Byron, after a brief stay in Switzerland, 
moved into Italy, and lived there continuously for about seven 
years. In March, 181 8, Shelley left England forever, and during 
the remainder of his life was an Italian resident. A large part of 
Byron's best work and nearly all of Shelley's was written on the 
ground where Dante, Tasso, and Petrarch had written centuries 
before. For many years, also, Walter Savage Landor, though he had 
little to do either with Shelley and Byron or with popular currents 
of literature, was a dweller in the same country. 

The first man who made the Italian current conspicuous in the 
public eye, however, was neither a great poet nor a resident in Italy, 
though he probably knew a good deal of Italian literature. This 
was John Hookham Frere. Member of a family of diplomats, he 
was engaged in important diplomatic service from 1800 to 1804 
at Lisbon and Madrid, and again at the latter station 1808-09. After 
that, feeling that he had been unjustly criticized, he withdrew to 
private life, but was for many years in active correspondence with 
his brother, who was secretary of the British Legation at Constan- 
tinople. He was thus, like Byron, and even before Byron, in touch 
with the thought of the Mediterranean peoples. As a result of his 
years in Spain he played a subordinate part in the Spanish literary 
current. Three of his translations from the "Poem of the Cid" were 
printed as an appendix to Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid"; and 
many years later he corresponded with Southey, aiding him in his 
"Peninsular War." 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

During his London life Frere was one of the Holland House wits, 
and might have been included in that group of poets. Lord and Lady 
Holland were old friends; they had spent some months at Lisbon 
when he was there; and on a window in Holland House Frere wrote: 

May neither Fire destroy, nor Waste impair, 
Nor Time consume thee, till the twentieth heir; 
May Taste respect thee, and may Fashion spare. 

Most of his work, all of his best, is mildly satirical. In 1797 he was 
one of the authors, in The Anti-Jacobin, of "The Rovers," "The 
Loves of the Triangles," and those other pungent take-offs on 
Darwin and melodrama. His "Prospectus and Specimen of an in- 
tended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft" is a 
burlesque of tales on medieval chivalry: 

Beginning (as my Bookseller desires) 
Like an old Minstrel with his gown and beard. 

This poem, however, though in harmony with the spirit of Pope, 
is in a manner very different and new in English poetry. It is 
modeled on the Italian mock-heroic writers, and uses their ottava 
rima, which had once been fairly common in English verse but had 
fallen into disuse for over a century. Though enjoyable reading, it 
was neither great nor directly very influential on the public mind; 
but it set fire to Byron and produced from him his "Beppo," and, 
as a result of "Beppo," "Don Juan." In October, 181 7, Byron wrote 
to Murray announcing "Beppo," and said: "I have written a poem 
of eighty-four octave stanzas, humorous, in or after the excellent 
manner of WTiistlecraft (whom I take to be Frere)." Again, March, 
1 81 8: "The style is not English, it is Italian; Berni is the original 
of all; Whistlecraft was my immediate model." How closely Frere 
was his "immediate model" one does not realize until he has read 
the earlier poem: 

I've finished now three hundred lines and more. 
And therefore I begin Canto the Second, 

Just like those wandering ancient Bards of Yore; 
They never laid a plan, nor ever reckon'd 

[ 214 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

What turning they should take the day before; 

They follow'd where the lovely Muses beckon'd: 
The Muses led them up to Mount Parnassus, 
And that's the reason that they all surpass us; 



or 



When those vile cannibals were overpower'd, 
Only two fat Duennas were devour'd. 

It is doubtful how thoroughly Frere knew his continental models; 
but Byron, by adoption already an Italian, understood them well 
and pursued the trail with vigor. His "Beppo," unlike Frere's poem, 
is Italian in characters and location as well as in manner. He fol- 
lowed this up with his "Vision of Judgment" and "Don Juan," 
poems which might antagonize an audience but could not fail to 
impress them. His Italian environment may have fostered their 
indecency as well as their greatness, for he remarks in the first 
canto of "Don Juan" that 

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, 

Is much more common where the climate's sultry. 

In the fourth canto he defines his relationship to his Italian models : 

To the kind reader of our sober clime 

This way of writing will appear exotic; 
Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme. 

Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, 
And revell'd in the fancies of the time, 

True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic; 
But all these, save the last, being obsolete, 
I chose a modern subject as more meet. 

Byron likewise translated part of Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore" in 
ottava rima, and in the advertisement to it commented on Frere's 
debt to the old Italian satirists. Southey also felt that here was a 
new phenomenon in poetry, and wrote to Landor in 1820: "A 
fashion of poetry has been imported which has had a great run, and 
is in a fair way of being worn out. It is of Italian growth, — an 
adaptation of the manner of Pulci, Berni, and Ariosto in his sportive 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

mood. Frere began it. What he produced was too good in itself and 
too inoffensive to become popular. . . . Lord Byron immediately 
followed; first with his 'Beppo/ which implied the profligacy of the 
writer, and lastly, with his 'Don Juan,' which is a foul blot on the 
literature of his country, an act of high treason on English poetry. 
The manner has had a host of imitators." 

The "host of imitators" are, as usual, no company for a man 
loving good poetry; but as one of the most popular and least un- 
worthy we may mention "Barry Cornwall," whose "Gyges" and 
"Diego de Montilla" both play the sedulous ape to Frere and Byron. 
The latter poem begins: 

The octave rhyme (Ital. ottava rima) 

Is a delightful measure made of ease 
Turn'd up with epigram, and, tho' it seem a 

Verse that a man may scribble when he please, 
Is somewhat difficult; indeed, I deem a 

Stanza like Spenser's will be found to tease 
Less, or heroic couplet: there, the pen 
May touch and polish and touch up again. 

Among minor mock-heroic productions of the type may be men- 
tioned Tom Hood's "Two Peacocks of Bedfont," "Bianca's Dream, 
A Venetian Story," and several other short poems. 

In addition to the direct satirical current mentioned by Byron 
and Southey, there was a great and sudden increase after 1817 in 
the use of the long neglected ottava rima for serious poetry. Shelley 
adopted it for his "Witch of Atlas" (1820), in which the intro- 
ductory stanzas are in the half-mocking style of Berni, but those 
of the narrative itself in the seriousness of unearthly beauty. He 
employed it also in the short poem "The Zucca." Keats used the 
Italian cadence for his Italian story of "Isabella" (1820). Charles 
Lloyd, who had never tried that metre before, poured out hundreds 
of stanzas in it between 1820 and 1822, "Desultory Thoughts in 
London," "Titus and Gisippus," and "Beritola," the last an Italian 
tale, and both of the last partly borrowed from Boccaccio. He tells 
us that he never dreamed of copying the style of Pulci; but the 
monthly reviewers, he admits, declare "that he has attempted to 

[ 216 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

imitate, and failed in the attempt, the mixture of pathos and humor 
of the Italian writers." 

The mock-heroic tone and eight-line stanza, however, were only 
part of a much larger borrowing from Italian tradition and literature 
in the form of narrative material. The "romantic" longing for some 
new national antiquity to write about, having traversed Scotland, 
England, Wales, Germany, and Spain, came at last to the land of 
Horace and Vergil. By 1820 "Barry Cornwall," one of those light 
popular weathercocks who show best which way the wind is blowing, 
could write: 

For ever and for ever shall thou be 

Unto the lover and the poet dear, 

Thou land of sunlit skies and fountains clear, 

Of temples, and gray columns, and waving woods, 

And mountains, from whose rifts the bursting floods 

Rush in bright tumult to the Adrian sea: 

O thou romantic land of Italy! 

His "Marcian Colonna" is an Italian verse narrative, to which is 
prefixed a quotation from Byron's "Lament of Tasso." Several of 
"Cornwall's" brief and not badly written dramatic scenes are from 
Italian history or legend: "Ludovico Sforza," "The Way to Con- 
quer," "The Broken Heart," "The Falcon," "Michael Angelo," 
"Raffaelle and Fornarina," "The Florentine Party." His "Sicilian 
Story" is from the tale of "The Decameron" that Keats retold so 
much better in "Isabella." J. H. Reynolds derived his "Garden of 
Florence" from Boccaccio; and Charles Wells's "Stories from 
Nature" contained half a dozen prose Italian tales. With the excep- 
tion of Byron and Frere, all writers mentioned so far were connected 
with the eddy around Leigh Hunt and stood for the Italian phase 
of that tradition-breeding movement. Hunt in 181 8, in his "Epistle 
to Lord Byron," pointed out the significance of this tendency: 

All the four great Masters of our Song 
Stars that shine out amidst a starry throng, 
Have turned to Italy for added light. 
As earth is kissed by the sweet moon at night;: — 
Milton for half his style, Chaucer for tales, 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Spenser for flowers to fill his isles and vales, 

And Shakespeare's self for frames already done 

To build his everlasting piles upon. 

Her genius is more soft, harmonious, fine; 

Ours bolder, deeper, and more masculine: 

In short, as woman's sweetness to man's force, 

Less grand, but softening by the intercourse, 

So the two countries are, — so may they be, — 

England the high-souled man, the charmer Italy. 

The Italian current, however, was by no means confined to the 
"Cockneys." Samuel Rogers, during the brief restoration of the 
Bourbon French king before the "hundred days," had made through 
Italy one of those journeys that the Napoleonic wars had previously 
rendered so difficult. This had ripened in his mind while the poems 
of his old friend Byron and his new friend "Cornwall" were appear- 
ing; and in 1822 and 1828 respectively he published the two parts 
of his "Italy." Unlike all the poet's previous work, both in metre 
and mood, it consists of a series of very brief narratives or descrip- 
tive sketches, a few in prose, most of them in pleasing though not 
very powerful blank verse. 

There is a glorious City in the Sea. 
The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, 
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea- weed 
Clings to the marble of her palaces; 

or we have a vision of Galileo in young manhood, 

Chanting aloud in gaiety of heart 
Some verse of Ariosto. 

At every page in "Italy" we trace the influence of that great, ill- 
balanced friend whose apology it contains : 

Yes, Byron, thou art gone. 
Gone like a star that through the firmament 
Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course 
Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks, 
Was generous, noble — noble in its scorn 
Of all things low or little. 

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THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

Much later, in 1837, Wordsworth, the literary opposite but personal 
friend of Rogers, made a similar journey and wrote on the strength 
of it his "Memorials of a Tour in Italy." In this field the lesser poet 
reaped the better harvest. 

More fruitful than either was Hazlitt's brief trip in 1824 which 
resulted in his "Journey through France and Italy." One feels that 
the chapters dealing with the latter country are more colored by 
sentiment, by awe at the great past, by what is usually called 
romanticism, than those on the French landscape and people. The 
trail of "Childe Harold" is obvious. Like Byron the author cries 
in Rome: "Come here, oh man! and worship thine own spirit, that 
can hoard up, as in a shrine, the treasures of two thousand years, 
and can create out of the memory of fallen splendors and departed 
grandeur a solitude deeper than that of desert wildernesses. . . . 
Not far from this are the baths of Titus; the grass and the poppy 
(the flowers of oblivion) grow over them. ... A few paces off is 
the Coliseum, or Amphitheatre of Titus, the noblest ruin in Rome. 
... As you pass under it, it seems to raise itself above you, and 
mingle with the sky in its majestic simplicity, as if earth were a 
thing too gross for it." The ocean becomes for him Byron's "image 
of eternity," the 

glorious mirror where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempest. 

"There is something in being near the sea, like the confines of 
eternity. It is a new element, a pure abstraction. The mind loves to 
hover on that which is endless, and forever the same. . . . Great 
as thou art, unconscious of thy greatness, unwieldy, enormous, 
preposterous, twin-birth of matter, rest in thy dark, unfathomed 
cave of mystery, mocking human pride and weakness." The descrip- 
tion of Radicofani is an outburst of romantic medievalism never 
equaled in Hazlitt's writing on English ground, perhaps because, 
unlike Scott, he had lived among the inland towns of England and 
not on the scenes of her old border wars. "It reminded me, by its 
preternatural strength and sullen aspect, of the castle of Giant 
Despair in 'The Pilgrim's Progress.' The dark and stern spirit of 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

former times might be conceived to have entrenched itself here as 
in its last hold; to have looked out and laughed at precipices and 
storms, and the puny assaults of hostile bands, and resting on its 
red right arm, to have wasted away through inaction and disuse in 
its unapproachable solitude and barbarous desolation. Never did 
I see anything so rugged and so stately, apparently so formidable 
in a former period, so forlorn in this. It was a majestic shadow of 
the mighty past, suspended in another region, belonging to another 
age." 

The most important journey of all, though less connected with 
our subject than the others, was that of the great painter Turner. 
About 1 819 he followed Shelley and preceded Keats in his first 
pilgrimage to the land of Raphael and Correggio; and this sojourn 
in the south eventually had a marked effect on his artistic manner, 
especially increasing the lightness and brilliance of his color. In 
1823 he gave the world his "Bay of Baiae," "the first of those 
glorious dramas of Italy which are especially associated with his 
name." Most of Turner's great Italian paintings were done after the 
end of the Romantic generation; but in 1830 he furnished his admir- 
able illustrations to Rogers's "Italy." 

The minor poets after Waterloo have many other poems of Italian 
origin or inspiration at intervals through their volumes. Mrs. 
Hemans leads us to "Naples and her lovely bay" in "The Death of 
Conradin." Milman's greatly overrated play "Fazio" (1815) was 
one of the first forerunners of the general invasion. It is a story of 
erring justice, and so is the history of its reception; for it made 
Milman Professor of Poetry at Oxford, while Keats was caviare and 
Shelley anathema. Still earlier came Lord Thurlow's "Hermilda" 
(1812), a weak imitation of Tasso in ottava rima, and his feebly 
sentimental "Doge's Daughter" (1814). R. E. Landor, inspired 
perhaps by the Italian residence of his greater brother, in 1824 
roused a passing ripple of interest by his "Count Arezzi." In 1825 
Thomas Wade, as yet a mere boy and an almost too subservient 
admirer of Shelley, published five poems under the title of "Tasso 
and the Sisters." In them we find Italian subject-matter, ottava 
rima, and very obvious imitation of "The Witch of Atlas," combined 

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THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

with much immaturity and not a little genuine poetry. Of his play, 
''Woman's Love" (acted in 1828), he says in the Preface: "The 
sources from whence the story of this drama is derived, are well 
. known to the readers of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Chaucer. Goldoni's 
elegant genius adorned with it the stage of Italy; but the author of 
the present work had no opportunity of perusing the 'Griselda' until 
after the completion of 'Woman's Love.' " This imitative but really 
meritorious play went promptly through two editions. Like "The 
Cenci" of Wade's idol Shelley it was at once Italian and yet strongly 
colored by the Elizabethan dramatists. Mary R. Mitford between 
1820 and 1830 wrote three rather popular verse dramas on Italian 
themes, "Fiesco," "The Foscari," and "Rienzi." William Sotheby, 
who many years before had helped to imitate the Scotch poetry out 
of existence, in 1828 fathered a wearisome effusion imitating 
Rogers's poem and identical in title. "Romantic Italy" had become 
part of the literary stock in trade, like the other "romantic" coun- 
tries, and eventually led to the novels of Bulwer-Lytton, "Rienzi," 
"Zanoni," "The Last Days of Pompeii." 

Among the forces making for this tendency, it must be remem- 
bered that the wars of Napoleon had brought one phase of Italy 
three quarters of the way to London. The Corsican conqueror had 
filled Parisian art galleries with the rarest treasures of transalpine 
genius; and when the fall of Bonaparte opened these galleries to 
foreigners, Englishmen by a brief journey could see landscapes and 
portraits previously too remote for any save a few. The poet Croly 
in 1 81 5 visited Paris, and there saw on the glowing canvas, 

Superb Venetian, pearl and purple stoled; 
Romantic Lombard, fiery Florentine, 
Brightening, as up the Alp the evening's gold 
From the deep vineyard to the crown of pine. 

Croly was only one visitor among thousands of British and dozens 
of authors. 

A special current from Italy was that of her greatest poet Dante. 
During the eighteenth century he had been like St. Paul to a 
medieval Catholic, an author to be much revered and never read. 

[ 221 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Near the turn of the century Hayley had translated a fragment of 
"The Divine Comedy/' and Boyd the entire poem, in a manner not 
likely to increase its audience. Cary in 1805 published his admirable 
translation of "The Inferno," and in 18 14 that of the whole work; 
but this was very indifferently received at first. The discerning 
public made the translator bring out the complete poem at his own 
expense, a method of encouraging poetry not wholly forgotten in 
our own enlightened age. Apparently Dante had neither audience 
nor imitators until the downfall of Napoleon turned English life and 
thought once more toward the Mediterranean. A few discerning 
men loved him. Coleridge, for example, in 1804 wrote about money, 
"to buy me comforts for my voyage, etc., Dante and a dictionary." 
But when they tried to interest the public in him their praise fell 
upon deaf ears. In 1809 Southey wrote of his "Kehama": "Every 
generation will afford me some half dozen admirers of it, and the 
everlasting column of Dante's fame does not stand upon a wider 
base." This was four years after Cary's "Inferno." But in 181 8 a 
lecture on Cary's translation by Coleridge, and an article in The 
Edinburgh Review by Ugo Foscolo and INIackintosh suddenly 
created a public. Coleridge's lecture, according to his son, led to 
the immediate sale of a thousand copies. Five years earlier neither 
lecture nor article would probably have wakened any response; but 
now the reading world was becoming interested in all things Italian. 
In that same year (181 8) appeared Peacock's "Nightmare Abbey," 
in which the fashionable Mr. Listless says: "I don't know how it is, 
but Dante never came in my way till lately. I never had him in my 
collection, and if I had had him I should not have read him. But I 
find he is growing fashionable, and I am afraid I must read him 
some wet morning." The next year Cary's version went into a second 
edition. In 1824 Wordsworth, who was no great admirer of the 
gloomy Florentine, wrote rather peevishly: "It has become lately — 
owing a good deal, I believe, to the example of Schlegel — the fashion 
to extol him above measure." After this the vogue of "The Divine 
Comedy" was assured; but it started as part of the general Italian 
wave, and before that wave arose the best critics in Europe could 
not force Dante down the Anglo-Saxon throat. 

[ 222 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

This vogue had two roots. One was in England, represented by 
Gary, Leigh Hunt, author of "The Story of Rimini," Coleridge, and 
the English translations of Schlegel mentioned by Wordsworth. 
The other root was in Italy, found in the Dante imitations of Byron 
and Shelley. With the exception of Hunt's "Rimini," practically 
every imitation of Dante before 1830 was written in Dante's 
country. It was suggested to the imitator neither by Gary's render- 
ing nor by Schlegel's exegesis, but by the love of the Italian people 
for their great poet. "Why they talk Dante — write Dante — and 
think and dream Dante at this moment," wrote Byron from among 
them in 182 1, "to an excess, which would be ridiculous, but that he 
deserves it." And he adds, anticipating Garlyle by two decades, 
"There is a gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness." "I pass each 
day where Dante's bones are laid," he tells us in "Don Juan." 
Byron's well-meant though unsuccessful "Prophecy of Dante," in 
terza rima, was largely inspired by his Italian mistress, the Gountess 
Guiccioli, who is said to have known "The Divine Gomedy" by 
heart. His rides through Ravenna's "immemorial wood" accounted 
for his rather inadequate translation of the Francesca of Rimini 
episode. Such was the fascination of the threefold rhyme that he 
spoke of the "Prophecy" as his best work, and thought that the 
terza rima might have affected the metre of the fourth canto in 
"Ghilde Harold," making the stanzas run into each other. Among 
those stanzas there is one, written, not in England, but beside the 
great foreign dead of Santa Groce: 

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore. 

Dante had apparently become Byron's great world poet. In the 
Preface to "Gain" he said: "Since I was twenty I have never read 
Milton"; and Moore said that Byron "expressed to R[ogers] the 
same contempt for Shakespeare he has so often expressed to me." 

That Shelley voiced to Medwin his dissatisfaction with all trans- 
lations of Dante even Gary's; that he planned to render the whole 
"Divine Gomedy" into English terza rima; and that he actually 
wrote a few lines of the intended work is evidence enough that his 

[ 223 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

inspiration came from life in Italy not from volumes in England. 
His poems in Dante's metre and with an obvious attempt at the 
great poet's manner are of considerable bulk and high in quality, 
even if they are a hybrid product that is often not very much like 
the grim master of Tuscan song. The first of these is the unfinished 
"Prince Athanase," which in its pureminded but rather morbid self- 
analysis has more kinship with Byron's narratives or De Musset's 
"Namouna" than with the repentant but militant pilgrim through 
Purgatory. His famous "Ode to the West Wind" was mostly written 
in a wood by the Arno near Florence, near Dante's city; and there 
for once an Englishman drew a natural and compelling music from 
the foreign metre. In the brief "Tower of Famine," "The Woodman 
and the Nightingale," and "Matilda Gathering Flowers" the hand 
seems less practiced on the alien instrument. In Shelley's last, and 
incomplete, long poem, "The Triumph of Life," there is, however, a 
glory and an impetus of vision that, if not that of Dante, is certainly 
that of poetry. 

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task 

Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth 

Rejoicing in his splendor, and the mask 

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth — 
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows 
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth 

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose. 

The poem is confusing and incoherent in places, dream within 
dream, with the fluid obscurity of the German Romantiker not the 
overcompressed obscurity of Dante; yet Shelley's vision at times 
grows curiously like the older and greater one: 

And then he pointed to a company, 

Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs 

Of Csesar's crime, from him to Constantine; 

The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares 

Had foimded many a sceptre-bearing line. 
[ 224 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

This is the most Italian of all Shelley's poems. Not only is it in 
Dante's metre and with several verbal echoes of that poet, but the 
subject-matter is largely from Petrarch's "Trionfi," six poems in 
terza rima, and especially from the first, "The Triumph of Love 
over Man." It is the work of a half-Italianized English poet, the 
Shelley who wrote: "There is one solitary spot among those aisles, 
behind the altar, where the light of day is dim and yellow, under 
the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read Dante 
there." And again: "His apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise and the 
gradations of his own love and her loveliness ... is the most 
glorious imagination of modern poetry." 

The debt of Byron and Shelley was by no means confined to 
poems in Italian metres. In 1817 Byron visited Ferrara, saw the 
original MSS. of Tasso's "Gierusalemme," and the cell in which he 
was confined. That visit called out "The Lament of Tasso," and 
also the briefer but better lines in "Childe Harold." 

Ferrara, in thy wide and grass-grown streets, 
Whose symmetry was not for solitude. 
There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats 
Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood 
Of Este, which for many an age made good 
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore 
Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood 
Of petty power impell'd, of those who wore 
The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. 

And Tasso is their glory and their shame: 
Hark to his strain and then survey his cell. 

"The Lament of Tasso," though not very successful, is a dramatic 
monologue; and one cannot help noticing how much this type and 
the closely related brief dialogue have been fostered by Italian in- 
fluence. The best of Browning's "Dramatic Monologues" and 
Landor's "Imaginary Conversations" were written in Italy. "Barry 
Cornwall's" "Dramatic Scenes" were obviously composed under 
influence from that country. 

The fourth canto of "Childe Harold" is a splendid panorama of 

[ 225 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Italy: Venice, "rising with her tiara of proud towers"; "blue Friuli's 
mountains"; the "tomb in Arqua; — rear'd in air"; "the fair white 
walls" of Florence; Clitumnus, with its "grassy banks whereon the 
milk-white steer Grazes"; "the fall of waters" at Velino; and Rome, 
the "lone mother of dead empires." The "deep and dark blue Ocean" 
of the magnificent closing address is the Mediterranean, the battle- 
ground of Roman and Venetian navies. 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? 

More than that, the poem is the work of a man who has repudiated 
his native country, and who, at times at least, feels toward Italy like 
an adopted son, as when he voiced his own mood through his para- 
phrase of Filicaja: 

Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast 
The fatal gift of beauty, which became 
A funeral dower of present woes and past. 
On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough 'd by shame, 
And annals graved in characters of flame. 
Oh, God ! that thou wert in thy nakedness 
Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim 
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press 
To shed thy blood and drink the tears of thy distress. 

The year after this was printed Byron wrote to Murray: "I am sure 
my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with 
the earth of that country." 

Among minor effects, one cannot help wondering if the soft 
Mediterranean landscape did not show itself in the tropical descrip- 
tions of "The Island," which was dated at Genoa. 

And sweetly now those untaught melodies 
Broke the luxurious silence of the skies, 
The sweet siesta of a summer day, 
The tropic afternoon of Toobonai, 
Where every flower was bloom, and air was balm. 
And the first breath began to stir the palm. . . . 
[ 226 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

There sat the gentle savage of the wild, 
In growth a woman, though in years a child, 
As childhood dates within our colder clime 
Where naught is ripen'd rapidly save crime. 

Byron's dramas, with the exception of "Manfred," were wholly 
conceived and executed in Italy. Two of them, "Marino Faliero" 
and "The Two Foscari," are founded on Venetian history, and in 
the Preface to the former Byron wrote: "Every thing about Venice 
is, or was, extraordinary — her aspect is like a dream, and her his- 
tory is like a romance." Part of "The Deformed Transformed" is 
at medieval Rome. It was while in Italy that Byron developed his 
perverse though by no means wholly mistaken theory of dramatic 
art, which was that of a modified and rejuvenated neo-classicism. 
This theory was obviously encouraged by the Pope-Bowles Contro- 
versy, then raging on the ink-stained fields of England; — but we 
cannot help asking if it did not owe something also to Alfieri, the 
neo-classic dramatist of modern Italy. "Childe Harold" includes 
Alfieri with Michael Angelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli among the 
mighty dead of Santa Croce; and Shelley wrote home in 1821 that 
Byron "is occupied in forming a new drama, and, with views which 
I doubt not will expand as he proceeds, is determined to write a 
series of plays, in which he will follow the French tragedians and 
Alfieri, rather than those of England and Spain." Shelley added very 
truly, "This seems to me the wrong road." "Manfred," which was 
written before the author fell into this doctrinaire mood, is worth 
all the later dramas put together. The critical theories preached in 
the Prefaces to these are faint Drydenic echoes, nothing more. In 
Byron's letters, however, we find evidence that he was darkly grop- 
ing toward truths which the later experience of the theater has 
emphasized. The writing of a great tragedy "is not to be done by 
following the old dramatists, who are full of gross faults, pardoned 
only for the beauty of their language." "There is room for a dif- 
ferent style of the drama; neither a servile following of the old 
drama, which is a grossly erroneous one, nor yet too French, like 
those who succeeded the older writers." The main trouble with 
Byron's plays was neither in his theories nor in the influences 

[ 227 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

around him, but in the utterly undramatic character of his genius. 
"Manfred" is a great descriptive poem but a dramatic monstrosity. 

Byron's chief debt to Italian life and literature is that they helped 
him to find himself in what would probably have been his best vein 
had he lived. There had been from boyhood a marked dualism in his 
writings, one-half of him sardonic and realistic, the other half sen- 
timental and romantic. For years, like the damned in Milton's hell, 
he had been ferried back and forth between the fires of Werther 
and the icebergs of Racine. This dualism may have been partly due 
to the mixture of English and Scotch blood in him, partly to the 
alternation in his life of wild adventure and conventional society. 
The satirical Byron was naturally the greater; but as long as he 
played the slavish disciple of Queen Anne tradition he never realized 
his potentialities. Berni and Pulci supplied him with a weapon fitted 
to his hand; and the poetaster of the "Hints from Horace" became 
the great, mocking misanthrope of "Don Juan." 

Italy evoked from Shelley one drama worth all of Byron's, "The 
Cenci." "On my arrival at Rome," wrote Shelley in the Preface, 
"I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be men- 
tioned in Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless 
interest. . . . All ranks of people knew the outlines of this history, 
and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to 
have the magic of exciting in the human heart. . . . This national 
and universal interest which the story produces and has produced 
for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great city, 
where the imagination is kept for ever active and awake, first 
suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose." 
And the author almost makes himself an interpreter of Italian, 
rather than a creator of English thought when he adds: "In fact 
it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity of 
awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and 
success. Nothing remained as I imagined, but to clothe it to the 
apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as 
would bring it home to their hearts." Turning to Shakespearean 
plays, Shelley compares his, not to the transplanted "Othello," but 
to "Lear," written on English ground of an English king as this was 

[ 228 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

written on Italian ground of an Italian family, each a product of 
the country over which its terrible tradition had brooded for cen- 
turies. The religious feeling of the characters is Italian; and as such 
the author has to explain it to his far-off English audience. "Religion 
in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on 
particular days. ... It is interwoven with the whole fabric of 
life. ... It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. . . . 
Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is ac- 
cording to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a 
persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check." The language of 
the tragedy is full of echoes from Shakespeare, especially from 
"Macbeth"; but the mood, the atmosphere, is that of those terrible 
confessions poured into the ear of Dante. 

The "Prometheus Unbound" was less directly a product of the 
soil, yet it probably would have been different if written elsewhere. 
In the Note on it Mrs. Shelley wrote of her husband: "The charm 
of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty 
than they had ever worn before. And, as he wandered among the 
ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxit- 
elean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces 
of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a por- 
tion of itself. There are many passages in the Trometheus,' which 
show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give 
back the impression with a beauty of poetical description pecu- 
liarly his own." Shelley himself put it even more strongly: "The 
blue sky of Rome and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring 
in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the 
spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama." 

With the exception of "Ozymandias" and the "Hymn to Intel- 
lectual Beauty," every one of Shelley's greatest short poems origi- 
nated south of the Alps. The "Lines Among the Euganean Hills" 
"was written after a day's excursion among those lovely moun- 
tains"; and the introductory verses "image forth the sudden relief 
of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by 
the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest 

[ 229 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

peak of those delightful mountains." It was over the Apennine that 
the cloud cried: 

I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
And their great pines groan aghast. 

It was through the pure air of Italy that his skylark sang "from 
heaven or near it." It was in the same climate, not in foggy England, 
that he composed the "Hymn of Apollo": 

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; 

and also the "Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici": 

When the moon had ceased to climb 
The azure path of Heaven's steep, 
And like an albatross asleep 
Balanced on her wings of light. 
Hovered in the purple night. 

In the "Ode to Naples" he tells us that the ancient sculptures of 
Pompeii 

Seemed only not to move and grow 
Because the crystal silence of the air 
Weighed on their life. 

The Italian nature of many more perishable poems is shown by 
their bare titles: "Marenghi," "Fiordispina," "Ginevra." One of the 
best, "Epipsychidion," is prefaced by an almost literal translation 
from Dante; and we cannot help believing that Shelley's idealiza- 
tion of poor Emilia Viviani is an attempt to follow in Dante's foot- 
steps, by making a very human female the symbol of eternal truth. 
In 1 82 1 Shelley wrote to the idealized or allegorized Emilia: 

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, 
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman 
All that is insupportable in thee 
Of light, and love, and immortality! 
Sweet Benediction in the eternal curse! 
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe! 
[ 230 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

In October of that same year Shelley told John Gisborne: "The 
Epipsychidion is a mystery; as to real flesh and blood, you know 
that I do not deal in those articles"; and concerning the "real flesh 
and blood" Mary Shelley wrote: "Emilia has married Biondi; we 
hear that she leads him and his mother (to use a vulgarism) a devil 
of a life." "Epipsychidion" is like its own description of the moon, 
a "shrine of soft yet icy flame," that "warms not but illumines" 
like the cold starry fervor of the "Paradiso." Emilia was its orna- 
mented image of the Virgin, a symbol to kneel before, not the true 
object of adoration. 

Any one wishing to study the effect of landscape on poetry might 
profitably compare the opening lines of Crabbe's "Village" with 
those of Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo." There are certain common 
elements in both. In Lincolnshire 

A length of burning sand appears, 
Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; 
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, etc. 

At Venice we are shown 

a bare strand 
Of hillocks, heaped from ever shifting sand. 
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds. 

But by the North Sea, 

With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound. 
And a sad splendour vainly shines around; 

and by the Adriatic, 

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow 

Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee. 

Thou paradise of exiles, Italy! 

Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and the towers 

Of cities they encircle 1 — it was ours 

To stand on thee, beholding it. 

Mary Shelley, back in England in 1824, seemed to feel that she had 
exchanged the land of poetry for one of prose. "What a divine place 

[ 231 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Italy is! It seems to mature all gentle feelings, and to warm with 
peculiar sensibility an affectionate heart; its winds whisper a thou- 
sand expressions of kindness — clouds vanish from the mind as from 
the sky. Here, methinks a cold rain falls upon the feelings, and 
quenches the living spark that was lighted there." Hunt said of 
Genoa: ''You learn for the first time in this climate, what colors 
really are. No wonder it produces painters. An English artist of any 
enthusiasm might shed tears of vexation, to think of the dull medium 
through which blue and red come to him in his own atmosphere, 
compared with this." 

The personal relations of Byron and Shelley while in Italy were 
at times cordial and at times distant, the feelings of Shelley running 
through those painful vicissitudes which might be expected in the 
presence of a great genius but a morbidly vicious man. Their in- 
fluence on each other's poetry was probably less than had been the 
case during their previous brief acquaintanceship in Switzerland. 
At that time they had both been more young and impressionable; 
and Byron had not yet in the cloaca maxima of Venetian vice ac- 
quired habits which made even his fellow poet look askance. The 
"Prometheus," if it owed some of its revolutionary Titanism to 
Byron, owed a debt contracted years back before "The Revolt of 
Islam" was written. It is obvious that Byron succeeded only in 
following the mocking side of Italian literature, Shelley only in 
following the serious one. The moods produced by landscape and 
ruin were naturally more similar. Shelley wrote of Rome in language 
that immediately suggests "Childe Harold." "Rome is a city, as it 
were, of the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, and who sur- 
vive the puny generations which inhabit and pass over the spot 
which they have made sacred to eternity." But such common moods 
very rarely found expression in the verse of both poets. 

In 1822 Leigh Hunt came to Italy to cooperate with Byron and 
Shelley in producing a new magazine. The Liberal. The death of 
Shelley almost immediately after Hunt's arrival, and the collapse 
of Byron's interest made the periodical doomed from the start. 
Only four numbers of it appeared; but during its brief life it became 
a channel for pouring Italian translations and imitations into Eng- 

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THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

land, translations and imitations which the English public rejected 
as undesirable immigrants. Byron's part included the translation 
of Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore," Canto I, and the great but ill-timed 
"Vision of Judgment" which in the words of Hunt, "played the 
devil with all of us." The rest of the Italian element in The Liberal 
had no great intrinsic value, but considerable bulk. Hunt wrote two 
satires, "The Dogs" and "The Book of Beginners," in metre and 
mood washed-out imitations of "Don Juan" and "Beppo." "The 
Florentine Lovers" was not great, nor was Mrs. Shelley's "Giovanni 
Villani." Several unidentified translations from Alfieri were included 
among the verse. The Liberal was a straw showing which way the 
wind blew ; but the wind passed over it and it was gone. 

Hunt remained in Italy three years, and so had an opportunity 
to increase his knowledge of Italian literature and sympathy for it. 
This counted much later (in 1846) when he published his "Stories 
from the Italian Poets," containing prose summaries or loose ren- 
derings of "The Divine Comedy" and of poems by Ariosto, Boiardo, 
Pulci, and Tasso, with comments, critical notices, and occasional 
passages versified. Much earlier than that he wrote his best drama, 
"The Legend of Florence," based on a romance of real life in an 
Italian periodical. After his return from Italy also Hunt extensively 
revised his "Story of Rimini" and freed the landscape descriptions 
"from northern inconsistencies." All that lies beyond the period 
which we are studying, but helps to show the directions in which 
literary currents were turning. Incidentally, on his voyage to the 
Mediterranean in 1822 Hunt's chief reading, besides "Don 
Quixote," was in Ariosto and Berni. 

The isolated figure of Walter Savage Landor hardly belongs to a 
discussion of literary currents and eddies. They broke around his 
self-sufficient and unbending personality like swirling tides around 
a bowlder. Yet even he was not left wholly unaffected. At first, 
indeed, it would seem as if he were a central figure in the Italian 
stream. He lived in Italy continuously from 181 5 to 1832. He 
wrote about several famous people of that country. Memories of 
him mingle for the tourist with those of Byron, Shelley, and Hunt 
at Pisa, with those of Dante and Boccaccio at Florence. In the 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

country of ancient Rome he proved himself the most Roman of 
English authors. But when we ask ourselves, would he have written 
differently elsewhere we are by no means as sure of an affirmative 
answer as in the case of the other expatriated poets. 

Not love but necessity brought him to Dante's country. During 
his first year of residence there his brother wrote: "He has seen 
nothing of Italy, and yet he swears that it contains nothing worth 
seeing." By 1823 he felt more kindly and said, "Italy and Greece 
are the only countries which I would pay a postilion eighteen pence 
to see"; but he never waxes as enthusiastic over Italian landscape 
or literature as Shelley did. There is no niche for him in the Dante 
movement. "Some time or other," he says, "I propose to finish 
Dante, which I began about eleven years ago, but wanted perse- 
verance. A twentieth or thirtieth part of what I read was excellent." 
On Tasso he was even more severe. He had moderate admiration 
for Ariosto, who "is a Carnival poet," but "is never very bad," and 
enthusiasm enough for Boccaccio, "the greatest genius of Italy, or 
the continent." Also he was an admirer of Alfieri. 

He had practically no connection, literary or personal, with the 
other expatriated authors. Shelley and Byron he never became 
acquainted with, though the former was living in Pisa when he was, 
and the latter came there only one month after his departure. Hunt 
and Hazlitt called on him, and were cordially received, but became 
no part of his life. Contrary to all natural expectations, the chief 
influence exercised on him was that of Southey, with whom he 
maintained for years an intimate correspondence. It is a question if 
he would have written his "Imaginary Conversations," though he 
had made some abortive attempts in the same line years before, had 
he not been fired by the fact that Southey was composing dialogues. 
"I wish to God I could exchange the Lake of Como for the Lake 
of Keswick, just one evening," he wrote. When we add to this his 
glowing appreciation of Wordsworth, "In thoughts, feelings, and 
images not one amongst the ancients equals him," we are half 
tempted to consider Landor as the foreign legion of the Lakers' army. 
To realize that he was not one of an English poetical school in Tus- 
cany, we need only read Wordsworth's letter to him: "It is reported 

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THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

here that Byron, Shelley, Moore, and Leigh Hunt (I do not know if 
you have heard of all these names) are to lay their heads together in 
some town of Italy for the purpose of conducting a journal to be 
directed against everything in religion, in morals, and probably in 
government and literature, which our forefathers have been accus- 
tomed to reverence." Landor always had a marked antipathy toward 
Byron, and at first toward Shelley, though this changed into gen- 
uine admiration after the latter 's death. Of the dying Keats he 
naturally saw nothing. His own proudly defiant words, "What I 
write is not written on slate, and no finger, not of Time himself, who 
dips it in the clouds of years, can efface it," is in dramatic contrast 
with the tragic inscription on the boy poet's humble headstone in 
the cemetery of Caius Cestius. 

None the less from 1821 to 1829 Landor was living in or near 
Florence, near the "mighty dust" of Santa Croce; and there during 
those years he wrote about one hundred "Imaginary Conversa- 
tions," most of which were published in England within that period. 
They deal with all ages, ancient or modern, with Greece, Rome, 
Italy, England, France, Russia, and the Iberian peninsula. Whether 
Landor owed much or little to his Italian environment, his conti- 
nental life must have aided him in preparing for this vast sweep, 
which reminds us of Hugo's "Legend of the Centuries." And, what- 
ever the cause, we must remember that, like Byron and Shelley, he 
first found himself, first produced his greatest and most character- 
istic work on Italian ground. What he might have done in England 
we know not; but he lived there until he was thirty-nine and pro- 
duced nothing save unreadable conglomerations of magnificent 
verse passages. One of Landor's Conversations closes with a 
denial that climate affects genius. The climate of Austria is tem- 
perate and regular, but where are her great men? Florence where 
Landor did his best work has fogs in winter and stifling heat in 
summer, yet her men of genius are legion. "A town so little that 
the voice of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be heard at the 
extremities, reared within three centuries a greater number of citi- 
zens illustrious for their genius than all the remainder of the 
Continent (excepting her sister Athens) in six thousand years." 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

All of which seems to us very bad logic. Climate is only one force 
out of many in a writer's environment; and as far as it counts, the 
obvious conclusion would be that a variable climate like that of 
Florence is more conducive to genius than a mild and equable one, 
a theory which has recently been advanced by certain scientists. 

But we are growing too theoretical and scientific. To return to 
literature, which after all is the gift of God, and not of the Weather 
Bureau. Besides his prose masterpieces, Landor wrote at this time 
a number of those masterly short lyrics which were published much 
later. They are as condensed as Tacitus, as vivid as "Livy's pictured 
page," Roman in the land of Rome. 

My hopes retire; my wishes as before 
Struggle to find their resting-place in vain: 
The ebbing sea thus beats against the shore; 
The shore repels it; it returns again. 

It was in Italy that Landor definitely abandoned Latin for English 
as the medium of his shorter poems. An esthetic aristocrat, he may 
have wished for them a language unprofaned by landlords, butchers, 
slanderers, or political orators; and in a foreign country English 
became such a language. In Great Britain it was the common pave- 
ment for every one to tread; at Florence it was the reserved space 
behind the altar rail. Certain it is that the best poetry and prose of 
Landor was produced by a man no longer a spiritual citizen of his 
fatherland. "My country now is Italy, where I have a residence 
for life," he declared; and "nothing but the education and settle- 
ment of my children would make me at all desirous of seeing 
England again." 

The Italian tendency in English literature ran parallel to a similar 
and exactly contemporary one in Germany. It was part of an inter- 
national wave. Ricarda Huch tells us that among the Germans 
"Italy was frequently visited, and but few of the romanticists did 
not learn to know it. . . . The romantic painters felt at once the 
attractive power of the Romish Church and the dimly anticipated 
rapture of the South. . . . Before the first pictures of Bellini and 
Giotto, which Jonas Veit saw, he felt as if he must melt into tears 

[ 236 ] 



THE EXPATRIATED POETS 

or die of bliss. For the classical poets, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, 
Italy was also the land of longing; but at the same time their feeling 
had not the romantic character, precisely because the pilgrimage 
to the Church was lacking. For them Italy was the classical land, 
where the author developed a sense of measure and form, refining 
and toning down the inborn barbarousness of the North. On the 
contrary the Romanticists sought in Italy the nature of the South 
as exuberance, abundance, sensuous rapture; not culture but frag- 
mentary culture, the return to savage nature, loosening of ties. 
Zacharias Werner declared that he must go at once to Italy, 'not 
to work there, where follies were plenty, but to forget himself and 
everything else among ruins and flowers.' It was a powerful impulse 
like that of man toward woman, an impulse toward intoxication, 
toward freedom from measure and rule, toward beauty in its wild 
state. . . . The genuine romantic Italy is painted by Eichendorff: 
The land full of devastated palaces, full of gardens grown wild, 
where marble statues lead a lonely, enchanted life, where nothing 
moves but ancient fountains, where there breathes a sultry and 
intoxicating perfume, where memory and the past move among 
ruins, where dangerous physical attractions everywhere ensnare the 
heart. Of modern Italy he knew little more than that it was the land 
of the Pope, the throne of the Church. ... In another of Eichen- 
dorff's prose romances a young man enters Rome at evening. . . . 
'It seemed to him as if he were entering into a splendid fairy 
tale.' . . . We gain wholly different pictures of Italy from the pens 
of Ringseis, Gorres, Carus, for whom Italy also possessed a special 
attraction. . . . Models of realistic-romantic description are found 
in the journals of Carus about his travels in Italy. 'Italy, receive 
your old lover kindly,' he cries, touched at heart, when after thirteen 
years he treads again the threshold of the land of beauty." 

The English and German authors neither met nor influenced each 
other perceptibly in Italy. Their differences are those of race, their 
likenesses due to a common environment. Among both were sown 
the seeds of later pre-Raphaelitism in art and literature. Landor, 
says Sidney Colvin, "anticipated the modern predilection for the 
pre-Raphaelite masters, whose pictures were then in no demand." 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Both nations had men like Goethe and Landor who strengthened 
from Italian inspiration the "classic" sense of form. Both had 
writers like Shelley and Eichendorff to whom Italy was a glorious 
dreamland, though no Englishman in this field became so visionary 
as the transcendental Teuton. After the fall of Napoleon, from 
England, from Germany, and to a lesser but perceptible degree, 
from France, poetry followed in the path of Alaric and pitched its 
tent on the plains of Lombardy or by the banks of the Tiber. 



[ 238 ] 



CHAPTER XI 

Popular Taste and Minor Tendencies, 1815-1830 

The popular demand for new books of poetry during the first decade 
of the nineteenth century was considerable and apparently increased, 
reached its maximum during the first half of the second decade, and 
fell off rapidly during the third. The popularity of Byron was partly 
due to the fact that he was launched on the rising wave. To be sure, 
he was one of the chief creators of it; but Scott, Campbell, and 
Moore had all set it in motion before him. The unpopularity of 
Keats and Shelley, though inherent in the nature of their work, was 
aided by the fact that they met the falling tide just when they 
should have emerged from obscurity. Whatever effect great wars 
have or do not have on the poetry of a nation, the general demand 
for verse in England began to decline not long after Waterloo. 
Even the marked intellectual impetus given by the sudden opening 
of continental Europe could not keep it long at flood. Sales fell off, 
and if taste improved within a chosen circle it deteriorated among 
the reading masses. Before 181 6 the popular demand had been for 
what was virile and second rate, "Marmion" and "The Corsair." 
Afterward its languid preference was given to the prudish, senti- 
mental, and third rate, to Mrs. Hemans, Letitia Landon, Mary 
Mitford, the "too lovey" verse of Procter, or at best to Moore's 
"Lalla Rookh," a rather effeminate substitute for "The Lay of 
the Last Minstrel" or "The Giaour." "The atmosphere seems no 
longer the same as when it was weighed down and rendered heavy 
by the powerful bad angel Napoleon," declared a Blackwood's 
contributor regarding literature ; but the change to which he testified 
was by no means an unmixed blessing. 

The period after 181 5 begins with Byron in the height of his 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

renown. He still, according to Procter, "in 1818 was the most popu- 
lar poet of his day"; but the widespread excitement against him 
after the scandal of 181 6 combined with the foreign and misunder- 
stood character of his later works to push him from his throne. 
Blackwood's in 1822 printed a facetious rhymed "Critique," which 
is probably a fair index of public feeling and which began: 

So the public at length is beginning to tire on 
The torrent of poesy pour'd by Lord Byron. 

His kingdom fell to pieces, Moore reigning leisurely over the larger 
fragment of it. After 1820 the popular supremacy in literature 
reverted to Scott in his character as novelist; and there was no 
longer any undisputed monarch of poetry. 

In Scotland the reading public frankly turned its back on verse 
and demanded prose. In 181 7 Blackwood's declared: "Poetry is at 
present experiencing the fickleness of fashion, and may be said to 
have had its day. Very recently, the reading public, as the phrase 
is, was immersed in poetry, but seems to have had enough." In Eng- 
land, while the reputation of Wordsworth and Coleridge was growing 
among the discerning few, the majority made poetry a fad, and 
produced a spurious enthusiasm almost as discouraging to genius 
as the outspoken disapproval north of the Tweed. The reviewer of 
Leigh Hunt's poems in The London Magazine said in 1820: "We 
have, probably, at this time, more persons who make the admiration 
of poetry their outward boast, and fewer who make the love of it 
their inward happiness, than at any former period since the revival 
of letters. . . . Poetry is the reigning belle of the day — admired by 
all, and loved by none." 

Contemporary with this false vogue of poetry came a marked 
increase in the number of minor poets. Southey wrote of them in 
1 81 8: "They are become marvelously abundant in England; so that 
publications which twenty years ago would have attracted consider- 
able attention, are now coming from the press in shoals unnoticed." 
Three years later Wordsworth said rather petulantly: "As to poetry, 
I am sick of it; it overruns the country in all the shapes of the 
plagues of Egypt." Blackwood's in 1822 speaks of two thousand 

[ 240 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

very respectable poets living at that time, and a few months later 
said: "The land is overflowing with poetry as with milk and honey." 
According to Lockhart, when Tom Moore visited Scott in 1825, 
"the commonness of the poetic talent in these days was alluded to. 
'Hardly a Magazine is now published/ said Moore, 'that does not 
contain verses which some thirty years ago would have made a 
reputation.' — Scott turned with his look of shrewd humor, as if 
chuckling over his own success, and said, 'Ecod, we were in the luck 
of it to come before these fellows' ; but he added, playfully flourish- 
ing his stick as he spoke, 'we have, like Bobadil, taught them to 
beat us with our own weapons.' " "Poetry, nay good poetry, is a 
drug in the present day," declared Scott later in the same year. 
Such a jungle growth of pseudo-genius could not fail to make the 
recognition of true genius more difficult; the reader who had already 
filled his bookshelves with the lollypops of L. E. L. and the exotics 
of Milman might naturally hesitate before adding the "Eve of 
St. Agnes." 

Meanwhile the most unreasonable and unliterary tjrpe of prudish- 
ness was rampant everywhere. Our own age has gone so far to the 
other extreme in literature that it is a profound experience to study 
the public which collided with Byron's "Cain." "The reign of Cant 
in England is growing wider and stronger each day," wrote Mary 
Shelley in disgust, after her return from Italy. "John Bull (the news- 
paper) attacked the licenser of the theaters for allowing a piece to 
pass with improper expressions; so the next farce was sent back to 
the theater with a note from the licenser to say that in the farce there 
were nine damns, and two equivocal words which, considering what 
John Bull said, he could not permit to pass." Lamb, a much more 
unprejudiced witness, ascribed the failure of a certain play partly 
to the fact that one of the characters was a fallen woman, "a most 
unfortunate choice in this moral day. The audience were as scan- 
dalized as if you were to introduce such a person to their private 
tea-tables." Crofton Croker in 1828 wrote regarding the popular 
failure of Lady Morgan's "O'Briens and O'Flaherties": "Colburn, 
I hear, swears that Jerdan's having discovered it was an improper 
book for ladies to read has cost him five hundred pounds." In the 

[ 241 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

prefatory essay to his 1830 edition of Webster's plays, Dyce com- 
ments on the coarse language of Elizabethan drama, and says of 
his own day: "But the public taste has now reached the highest 
pitch of refinement, and such coarseness is tolerated in our theaters 
no more." He adds suggestively that perhaps "the language of the 
stage is purified in proportion as our morals have deteriorated." 

A curious evidence of the change in attitude between the mid- 
eighteenth century and 1820 is given in Lockhart's "Life of Scott." 
The great novelist had procured for a grand-aunt some novels of 
Aphra Behn, which she had not opened for decades. "The next 
time I saw her afterwards," wrote Scott, "she gave me back Aphra, 
properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: 'Take back your 
bonny Mrs. Behn; and, if you will take my advice, put her in the 
fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. 
But is it not,' she said, 'a very odd thing that I, an old woman of 
eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read 
a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the 
amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most credit- 
able society in London.' This, of course," added Sir Walter, "was 
owing to the gradual improvement of the national taste and 
delicacy." In 1823, Scott, one of the purest-minded men in Europe, 
was compelled by his publisher to recast some twenty-four pages of 
"St. Ronan's Well," lest the original version might strike the chaste 
public as "improper." 

Perhaps this moral attitude had something to do with a minor 
literary wave, the Hebraic. This was an offshoot of the general 
Orientalizing tendency, but fostered by the Bible and the pulpit, as 
the tales of Oriental harems were not. One of the first evidences of it 
was "The World Before the Flood" (181 2) by that most excellent 
man, that once rather popular and to-day rather boresome poet, 
James Montgomery. This long epic has some flashes of good descrip- 
tion, but, like the people which it describes, has now become extinct. 
The Hebraic element continues in the author's hjmins, some of which 
have genuine merit, and many of which are widely used by American 
churches. Byron's "Hebrew Melodies" in 181 5 gave added popu- 
larity to Scriptural themes, and contained at least one masterly 

[ 242 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

lyric, however insincere they may ring at times. In his later Old 
Testament dramas, "Cain" and "Heaven and Earth," Byron must 
have seemed to Bible readers like Hassan in Moore's "Fire-wor- 
shippers," brooding over the sacred Koran, 

Unblushing, with thy Sacred Book, 

Turning the leaves with blood-stained hands. 
And wresting from its page sublime 
His creed of lust and hate and crime. 

In the same year with "The Hebrew Melodies" Joseph Cottle, that 
invaluable weathercock as to literary tendencies, published his un- 
readable "Messiah." Not many months later came the "Sacred 
Songs" of Moore, a number of which deal rather feebly with the his- 
tory of ancient Israel, but contain abundant evidence that the author 
had recently reviewed both the Bible and the writings of Josephus. 
Bishop Heber followed the same path as Montgomery with less 
success, and left a fragmentary "World Before the Flood" as well 
as various other Biblical narratives. A third handling of the Deluge 
and the Antediluvians is found in Dale's "Irad and Adah, a Tale 
of the Flood," which came out a decade later than Montgomery's 
epic, and which, like its contemporary poems, "Adonais" and "The 
Eve of St. Agnes," used the romantic stanza of Spenser. There is 
some excellent description in the poem. Blackwood's, in a very 
favorable review, placates the prudish age by announcing that heads 
of families "cannot lay before young eyes a more pure and instruc- 
tive page than that of Mr. Dale." It was at that very time that the 
clergymen of England were thrown into spasms by Byron's "Cain," 
so curiously do the threads of literary influence get criss-crossed. 
Several minors turned out brief lyrics on ancient Palestine, George 
Croly, for example, writing verses on Jacob's dream and Christ's 
entry into Jerusalem. For better or worse, the thing was in the air; 
and in 1817 we find James Hogg lamenting that "save two or three 
Hebrew Melodies, I have not written a line since I left Edinburgh." 
The most popular and consistent representative of this current 
was the Rev. Henry H. Milman, whose Biblical dramas, "The Fall 
of Jerusalem," "The Martyr of Antioch," and "Belshazzar," ap- 

[ 243 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

peared between 1820 and 1822. The second has some points of like- 
ness to Chateaubriand's "Les Martyrs," published in France thirteen 
years before; and the third handles a theme, Belshazzar's last 
banquet, which poet and painter of that time wore sadly threadbare. 
There is little of enduring quality in Milman's rhetoric, his mag- 
nificent stucco palaces of words; but he met for a short time with 
an enthusiastic welcome. "A glorious poem," Heber called ''The Fall 
of Jerusalem." Mrs. Hemans, who herself produced a number of 
Hebraic lyrics, wrote of "The Martyr of Antioch": "It has added 
another noble proof to those you had already given the world of the 
power and dignity which genius derives from its consecration to 
high and sacred purposes." This enthusiasm was not confined to 
Milman's fellow Hebraists, for The Quarterly Review called his 
"Fall of Jerusalem" a poem, "to which, without extravagant en- 
comium, it is not unsafe to promise whatever immortality the English 
language can bestow." Blackwood' s in a later and wiser article justly 
complained that the author had been spoiled by the overpraise of 
reviewers. Even during the hour of its glory, Milman's popularity 
had something false and hollow about it, unlike the genuine enthu- 
siasm felt for earlier favorites. In the year of his "Belshazzar" this 
was the judgment of Mary Mitford: "I fancy that nine-tenths of Mr. 
Milman's readers care as little for poetry as you do; only that very 
few have the honesty to say so. They read him for fashion, for the 
honor and glory of reading a poem, and the soberer credit of reading 
a good book. It's a sort of union of sermon and romance — a Sunday 
evening amusement which mamas tolerate and papas smile upon. 
So, the book sells; and it ought to sell." 

This Hebraic tendency in literature ran parallel to a similar one 
in painting, although in the latter field it was less of an innovation. 
Between 181 1 and 181 7 the two Anglicized American painters, 
Benjamin West and his disciple Washington Allston, exhibited in 
England a series of pictures on Scriptural subjects, "Christ Healing 
the Sick," "Death on the Pale Horse," "Jacob's Dream," and others. 
It was a new departure with them, the earlier work of West having 
dealt mainly with classical history. In 181 7 Allston wrote to Wash- 
ington Irving regarding his own "Belshazzar": "Don't you think 

[ 244 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

it a fine subject? I know not any that so happily unites the magnifi- 
cent and the awful: a mighty sovereign, surrounded by his whole 
court, intoxicated with his own state — in the midst of his revellings, 
palsied in a moment under the spell of a preternatural hand." 
During the same period, but beginning somewhat earlier, Haydon, 
the friend of Keats, painted "The Judgment of Solomon," "Christ's 
Entry into Jerusalem," "Christ's Agony in the Garden," and 
"Lazarus," all completed before 1822, the year of Milman's "Bel- 
shazzar." In 181 8 one finds Mary Mitford eying critically Wilkie's 
"dirty 'Bathsheba,' " as well as "Mr. Ward's sprawling 'Angel,' and 
Mr. Hofland's exquisite 'Jerusalem.' " The paintings of West, at 
least, were popular and influential. 

Both in art and literature this tendency appears to have run its 
course and produced something of a reaction. Milman tells us that 
"Belshazzar" found a much colder reception than its predecessors; 
and the next year Joseph Severn in Italy wrote of his "Lorenzo di 
Medici": "Why I take this subject is — first, I am, and everybody 
else is, sick of sacred ones." Charles Wells's "Joseph and his 
Brethren," which has been discussed elsewhere, in 1824 fell dead 
from the press, and this in spite of the fact that its rich grandilo- 
quence of language, though better than Milman's, has a certain 
kindred element. 

All the phenomena alluded to so far, the collapse of Byron's 
vogue, the multitude of minor poets, and the rise of the Hebrew 
wave, are gone over sardonically in the eleventh canto of "Don 
Juan." The hero in London 

saw ten thousand living authors pass, 
That being about their average numeral; 
Also the eighty "greatest living poets," 
As every paltry magazine can show its. 

Byron himself, we are told, 

Was reckoned a considerable time 

The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme. 

But "Juan" was my Moscow, and "Faliero" 

My Leipsic, and my Mount Saint Jean seems "Cain." . . . 

[ 24s ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Sir Walter reigned before me; Moore and Campbell 

Before and after; but now grown more holy, 
The muses upon Sion's hill must ramble 

With poets almost clergymen, or wholly. 

These lines were apparently written early in 1823. 

Less popular than the Hebraic current, but of more enduring 
value, was the Hellenic, which was also an offshoot of Orientalism. 
It is most prominent in the writings of the Hunt circle, but by no 
means confined to them. Shortly before 1823 the Rev. George Croly 
wrote a considerable amount of verse on Greek themes, including 
"Gems, from the Antique," a series of short poems, each accom- 
panied by an engraving of the carved gem on which the lines are 
based. Meanwhile the Greek war for liberty had begun; and in 1822 
Campbell composed his "Song of the Greeks," 

Again to the battle, Achaians, 

soon followed by his "Stanzas on the Battle of Navarino." Tom 
Moore became interested, read many books about ancient or modern 
Hellas, and in 1826 printed his very flabby "Evenings in Greece." 
Between Keats's "Endymion" and "Hyperion" had appeared 
Thomas Hope's prose romance, "Anastasius, or Memoirs of a 
Greek, written at the Close of the Eighteenth Century," which 
Miss Mitford at first attributed to Byron because it seemed to her 
so "altogether Grecian." A little later we find Miss Mitford herself 
"so in love with Aeschylus and Sophocles . . . that I can really 
hardly think or talk of anything else." Articles on ancient or modern 
Greece abound in the leading magazines of the period. 

There was a widespread interest also in modern foreign literatures. 
The London Magazine, though the foremost, was not the only 
periodical to open its pages for articles and reviews on continental 
activities in that general awakening and unrest voiced by De 
Quincey. "We have hitherto seen no rational criticism on Greek 
literature; nor, indeed, to say the truth, much criticism which 
teaches anything, or solves anything, upon any literature." George 
Borrow in 1826 published an immature and little-noticed volume of 
translations from the Danish, the major part of it taken from the 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

contemporary poet and dramatist, the greatest of Danish roman- 
ticists, Oehlenschlager. Carlyle and De Quincey were at work intro- 
ducing German literature into England. Along with this, though not 
through the same purveyors, came the pseudo-sciences of the German 
Romantic period, the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, the physi- 
ognomy of Lavatar, and the animal magnetism of Mesmer. These 
"inflammatory branches of learning" were much discussed among 
the idle and young of London around 1825. 

In general, the closing years of the romantic generation were 
marked less by the formation of new tendencies than by the decay 
and degradation of old ones. After 1822 few new notes are heard 
even among the great writers, and those few are unheeded by the 
public. All the old tendencies are going to seed; all the old fields 
being worked to death by swarming imitators. Dreary is the picture 
given by Washington Irving in 1823: "There are such quantities 
of these legendary and romantic tales now littering from the press 
both in England and Germany, that one must take care not to fall 
into the commonplace of the day. Scott's manner must likewise be 
widely avoided." Byron bears similar testimony in "Don Juan": 

I won't describe; description is my forte. 

But every fool describes in these bright days 

His wondrous journey to some foreign court, 

And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise. 

Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport; 

While Nature, tortured twenty thousand ways, 

Resigns herself with exemplary patience 

To guide-books, rhymes, tours, sketches, illustrations. 

The most interesting figure among these shoals of imitators was 
Mrs. Hemans. Her pliant, receptive, ultra-feminine mind molded 
itself to her time as a devoted wife molds her character to her hus- 
band's wishes. Consequently her poetry becomes a thermometer of 
taste for her age and so acquires an extrinsic value which it does 
not possess as pure literature. Every transitory wave of literary 
enthusiasm in her generation has left its impress on the yielding 
sand of her imagination. Her creative period ran from 181 6 to 1834, 
from the first appearance of Keats to the first triumphs of Tenny- 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

son. In 1 82 1 the Quarterly Review, which had lashed "Endymion," 
spoke of her with kindly praise; and mentioned her vogue as recent 
but already considerable. For years her verse was widely read while 
that of Keats and Shelley gathered dust on bookstore shelves. 
Because she was the voice of the more superficial thought of her 
time, she was overrated in her own day; and for that very reason 
she is underrated in ours. She wrote from the romantic depths of a 
woman's dream world, and in an ancient story of morbid passion 
and intrigue could see nothing but the triumph of pure affection: 

Who called thee strong as death, O Love? 
Mightier thou wast and art. 

Such uncritical enthusiasm jars on the scientific temper of our own 
day. Yet she was one of the most musical and picturesque of minor 
poets; and her feeling was as sincere as her intellectual horizon was 
limited. 

It is her historical position, however, rather than her poetical 
merit which makes her worth lengthy discussion. To read her col- 
lected poems is to chart all the currents of popular taste from 
Waterloo to the death of Scott. "Ossian," whose vogue was yet 
widespread, leaves many traces, as in the description of the deserted 
Alhambra: 

Within thy pillar'd courts the grass waves high. 

The Byronic hero occasionally appears, 

And all — except the heart he brings — is peace. 

At other times we have the rich Oriental color of "The Giaour" and 
"Lalla Rookh." 

Last night a sound was in the Moslem camp, 

And Asia's hills re-echoed to a cry 

Of savage mirth! — Wild horn, and war-steed's tramp, 

Blent with the shout of barbarous revelry ; 

or we encounter a glowing description of a Hindu city, an account 
based on Forbes's "Oriental Memoirs." She follows in the wake 
of Milman's and Heber's Hebraic verse with her "Belshazzar's 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

Feast" and similar poems, and in the wake of Keats and Shelley 
with a dozen Hellenic lyrics and "Modern Greece," rich with the 
spoils of time, — and of "Childe Harold," Canto II. 

Where are the Fauns, whose flute-notes breathe and die 

On the green hills? — the founts, from sparry caves 
Through the wild places bearing melody? 

wails the exile from ancient Hellas. She admires with the disciples 
of Chateaubriand "the forest primeval" beyond the Atlantic. 

The woods — oh! solemn are the boundless woods 
Of the great western world when day declines. 

And louder sounds the roll of distant floods. 
More deep the rustling of the ancient pines. 

Though founded on an American work, "Sketches of Connecticut," 
this passage sounds like a direct borrowing from certain passages 
in "Le Genie du Christianisme." In several poems she responded 
with alacrity to the growing enthusiasm for both ancient and modern 
Italy: 

Home of the Arts! where glory's faded smile 
Sheds lingering light o'er many a mouldering pile; 
Proud wreck of vanish'd power, of splendor fled, 
Majestic temple of the mighty dead. 

Above all things else, however, Mrs. Hemans, like the poetry 
readers of her age, turned to sentimentalized medievalism. All the 
different types of this which her age evolved one after the other 
are found in her pages. There is German medievalism, as usual 
rather more wild and ghostly than the other varieties, with its 
Heilige Vehme, 

that awful band, 
The Secret Watchers of the land, 
They that, unknown and uncontroll'd 
Their dark and dread tribunal hold; 

or with its revivified horrors from Scott and Biirger, 

As the Wild Night-Huntsman pass'd. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

There is Scandinavian medievalism, as in the "Valkyriur Song," 
a rather weak anti-climax to Gray's "Fatal Sisters." There is Eng- 
lish medievalism, with more history and fewer ghosts, as in "The 
Troubadour and Richard Coeur de Lion," where the poetess re- 
touches a theme handled by Tom Warton in the dim dawn of 
romantic medievalism. Then there are a whole succession of armored 
knights and turbaned Moors from ancient Spain, glimpses of 

the clear, broad river flowing 
Past the old Moorish ruin on the steep, 

and of rocks that have 

echo'd to the tale 
Of knights who fell in Roncevalles' vale, 

for which local color, as usual in the South, replaces the supernatural 
thrill associated with northern antiquity. Last and most important 
comes a considerable volume of "Welsh Melodies," one of them, 
"Prince Madoc's Farewell," dealing with the hero of Southey's 
longest epic, and others that point back to "The Bard" of Gray, or 
that may have helped to call forth the partly romantic, mainly 
satirical Welsh past in Peacock's "Misfortunes of Elphin." Over 
all, that sentimentalism which the early nineteenth-century public 
inherited from the late eighteenth sparkles like a dew of tears; and 
over all we trace the mood which made Mrs. Hemans exclaim: 

Alas! that aught so fair should fly. 
Thy blighting wand, Reality! 

Yet the fair authoress was more genuine in following these different 
currents than may at first appear. Her Welsh medievalism was 
inspired by her residence in Wales. Her Spanish enthusiasm began 
when her brothers, as soldiers, were serving in the Iberian peninsula. 
Her enthusiasm for Italy must have owed something to the fact 
that she was partly of Italian blood. More than that, she wrote in a 
period when the various national "romantic movements" were flow- 
ing together, and creating a genuine interest in many currents. 
Minor though she is, a study of her sources and the mottoes quoted 
before her poems leads one to Herder, the German; to Oehlen- 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

schlager, the Dane; and to Lamartine and Chateaubriand among 
the French romantiques. Also as a translator she rendered into 
English poetry by the Portuguese Camoens, the Spanish Lope da 
Vega, and by Tasso, Filicaja, and Metastasio among the Italians. 
Her Protean muse and gently sentimental vein remind one of 
Procter, but she differed from him in this, that he took on the poeti- 
cal characteristics of various literary groups with which he asso- 
ciated, whereas she associated with no group and imitated from a 
distance. Both were pure-minded, kind-hearted, mediocre poets, 
who gave the kind-hearted, mediocre public what it wanted, and 
now pay the penalty for former applause by being too severely 
overlooked. 

Mrs. Hemans was well received both by the general public and 
by the discerning few. There followed her one who was justly 
ignored by the great critics and poets of her own age, but who com- 
manded an even wider circle of readers. This was Letitia Landon, 
the "L. E. L." of periodical fame. As poetry her work is naught, 
but as a literary phenomenon she has her little niche in history. 
All of her verse was written between 1820 and 1830. Her most 
popular work, the "Improvisatrice," appeared in the year of Byron's 
death and the publication of Shelley's posthumous poems. While 
the latter were being neglected, six editions of Miss Landon's master- 
piece were called for in about a year. Her poem is the life history 
of a young lady brought up in an atmosphere of music and art, who 
paints romantic pictures, and improvises various romantic poems, 
one a Moorish tale, another a medieval story, turning on a witch, 
a love philtre, and a poisoned young gentleman. The improvisatrice 
falls in love with a Radcliffean or Byronic hero, possessing the 
"raven curls" of stock romance. He marries another. The broken- 
hearted bluestocking relieves her feelings by telling in verse the 
Greek tale of Leades and Cydippe, and then passes away in a genteel 
consumption. The poem is full of moonlight, dark pines, Italian 
atmosphere, and mawkish sentimentality. Miss Landon followed 
this up with "Roland's Tower," a legend of medieval Germany; 
"The Troubadour," a long rhyming romance in the manner of 
Scott; and "The Golden Violet," a series of tales in a narrative 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

framework like Hogg's "Queen's Wake"; all of which are the most 
unmixed and unrelieved type of pseudo-medievalism. 

'Twas a fair sight, that arm'd array, 
Winding through the deep vale their way, 
Helmet and breast-plate gleaming in gold. 
Banners waving their crimson fold. 

Or in some empty castle the author recalls 

How through the portals sweeping came 
Proud cavalier and high-born dame. 

A few discerning judges at one time found something in her. Laman 
Blanchard wrote her biography; and Mrs. Browning with sisterly 
feeling lamented the hour 

when the glory of her dream withdrew, 
When knightly guests and courtly pageantries 
Were broken in her visionary eyes. 

For years she contributed to The Literary Gazette, and her quali- 
ties are those usually found in popular magazine poets. She is said 
to have cleared at least £2500 from her writings, a small sum in the 
second decade of the century, but a large one in the third, when no 
one save Tom Moore probably fared much better. Herself a slavish 
imitator, she apparently had many imitators among infinitesimal 
versifiers, shadows of a shade. 

Meanwhile another current than those discussed, the "Gothic," 
was spreading out like them into a stagnant marsh, full of croaking 
imitators. The Gothic tradition, though closely related to the medie- 
val, was essentially different in spell, its works often describing 
modern times, and depending mainly on the thrill of terror, whereas 
the other appealed chiefly to the love of the picturesque. From 1800 
to 181 5 the public was satiated with the "Gothic" terrors of Ann 
Radcliffe, and welcomed new works of the kind languidly. After 
that period the tale of terror once more came into its own with the 
masses, though frowned on by the more intelligent critics. The 
chief leader in the unpropitious revival was Maturin, an Irish clergy- 
man. His blank-verse tragedy "Bertram," with its shipwrecked 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

bandit hero, its thunderstorms and darkened abbeys, its trash and 
melodrama, had a great run both in print and on the stage just 
before the appearance of Keats's first volume. In 1820 appeared his 
novel, "Melmoth the Wanderer," which is at once one of the most 
worthless and one of the most ingenious of books. The hero wins 
length of days by selling his soul to the devil, who finally carries 
him off in a scene that wavers between the tragedy of Marlowe's 
"Faustus" and the absurdity of Lewis's "Monk." Previous to this, 
Melmoth has been married to an innocent and trusting girl in the 
dark by the animated corpse of a recently deceased hermit, under 
whose cold hand of blessing the bride shivers. The plot is curiously 
involved, story within story, a little like the bizarre plays of Tieck 
and Werner among the German Romantiker. Once more, as in 
Radcliffe's "Italian" and Lewis's "Monk," the reader treads the 
dungeons of the Inquisition and hears the wind whistle through the 
ruined vaults. This novel came out one year before De Quincey's 
"Confessions," and the two sold well side by side, for popularity, 
like misery, makes strange bedfellows. 

Maturin was not a great man, and the other revivers of the 
"Gothic" were still less so. Except for an occasional stray sample, 
such as a few of the "Tales from Blackwood," most of their work is 
now utterly dead. Yet there is ample proof that during the third 
decade of the century there were plenty of these ephemeral horror- 
mongers. "A man who does not contribute his quota of grim stories 
nowadays," declared Hunt in 1819, "seems hardly to be free of the 
republic of letters. He is bound to wear a death's-head as part of his 
insignia. If he does not frighten everybody, he is nobody." In 1824 
Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton that the word unearthly "is become 
a slang word with the bards; avoid it in future lustily." 

It should be noted that all the writers discussed in this chapter, 
Milman, Heber, Hemans, L. E. L., Maturin, were comparatively 
isolated from social groups of other writers. They did not represent 
literary eddies in which new thoughts and traditions were evolved. 
When we place by them the only other poets whose new works were 
genuinely popular after 1820, Procter and Moore, we feel the chill 
with which the atmosphere of the period must have inspired men 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

of genius. A letter of Beddoes in 1824 rings like a dirge: "The dis- 
appearance of Shelley from the world seems, like the tropical set- 
ting of that luminary to which his poetical genius can alone be com- 
pared, with reference to the companions of his day, to have been 
followed by instant darkness and owl-season: whether the vociferous 
Darley is to be the comet, or tender fullfaced L. E. L. the milk-and- 
watery moon of our darkness, are questions for the astrologers; if I 
were the literary weather-guesser for 1825 I would safely prog- 
nosticate fog, rain, blight in due succession for its dullard months." 
Five years later Lamb laments in the same dreary tone: " 'Tis cold 
work Authorship, without something to puff one into fashion." The 
"Essays of Elia" did not reach a second edition until 1836. 

While poetry and appreciative criticism were both on the decline, 
the field of critical theory produced one of the most exciting and 
fatuous conflicts in literary history, the Pope-Bowles Controversy. 
It began in 181 9, and, though nominally a struggle between 
romantic and neo-classic standards, was really a symptom of the 
generally diseased condition of popular taste. In 1806 William 
Bowles, in publishing an edition of Pope, had relegated that poet 
to the high yet secondary rank long before assigned him by Joseph 
Warton and now generally indorsed by twentieth-century criticism. 
For a dozen years his remarks passed comparatively unnoticed save 
for a few lines in Byron's "English Bards"; but in 181 9 Thomas 
Campbell in his "Specimens of the British Poets" defended Pope's 
character and genius, and especially took issue with an unlucky 
statement of Bowles that all poetry based on first-hand observation 
of nature and natural feeling is better than that based on descrip- 
tion of artificial objects or of transitory manners. This paragraph 
became the corpse of Patroclus over which the two parties battled. 
Bowles replied to Campbell; Campbell replied to Bowles; Byron 
joined the anti-Bowlesites, and was followed by several less-known 
figures. Traces of the conflict are scattered through the pages of 
The New Monthly Magazine, The London Magazine, The Quar- 
terly, and Blackwood's, to say nothing of a host of pamphlets on 
both sides. Charles Lloyd in 1821 published "Personal Essays on 
the Character of Pope as a Poet," verses in the traditional couplet 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

which, even when one of the "Lakers," he had loved. "We know 
that we took some small part in the contest," says a Blackwood' s 
reviewer, "but have been racking our brain in vain, to recollect on 
which side we fought, — or indeed, what was the precise bone of 
contention between the belligerent powers." The rather incoherent 
discussion apparently revolved around the question whether the 
artificial life of manners could be a theme for the highest poetry, 
and whether Pope, as the chief master in that field, could be held a 
supreme genius. The contest raged hotly for about three years, and 
somewhat more languidly for about three more. By 1827 it appears 
to have died out. "The victory remained with Bowles," says Pro- 
fessor Beers, "not because he had won it by argument, but because 
opinion had changed." In the last analysis that statement is true; 
but it does not represent the impression held by all people at the 
time, DTsraeli, one of Byron's fellow warriors, declared with a note 
of triumph: "More than one edition of Pope followed; and Pope 
was righted." 

The controversy was partly literary and partly personal. In both 
aspects it represented the general tension between the London 
society poets on the one hand and the rural and suburban ones on 
the other. Campbell and Byron, the leading protagonists for Pope, 
were both members of the Holland House circle. Of their minor 
allies, Octavius Gilchrist was born at Twickenham, Pope's home, 
was a contributor to The Quarterly and a friend of Gifford. The 
latter, like the elder D 'Israeli, was a London man, and was called 
by Byron his literary father. William Roscoe of Liverpool was the 
only prominent figure in the Pope camp whose literary affiliations 
were not with the metropolis. Bowles, without being either a "Laker" 
or a "Cockney," represented, in the eyes of his enemies at least, 
the theories of both, and drew down on his head the electricity which 
had been gathering against Wordsworth and Southey, Keats and 
Hunt. The general attitude of the "Lakers" and "Cockneys" was 
more favorable toward Pope himself than toward either his imitators 
or his theory of art. Coleridge had praised him while condemning 
his disciples. Wordsworth knew thousands of his lines by heart; 
and pronounced him "a man most highly gifted; but unluckily he 

[ 255 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

took the plain when the heights were within his reach." Hunt in 
the early days of The Examiner modeled his style on Addison, Steele, 
Goldsmith, and Voltaire. When composing "Rimini" he felt Dryden 
"the most delightful name to me in English poetry," and even said 
that Pope "had been my closest poetical acquaintance." But in the 
Preface to "Foliage" Hunt defines admirably the attitude which 
so many poets held and which Bowles was rather confusedly de- 
fending: "The consequence of this re-awakening of the poetical 
faculty is not, as some imagine, a contempt for Pope and the other 
chief writers of the French school. It justly appreciates their wit, 
terseness, and acuteness; but it can neither confound their monotony 
with a fine music, nor recognize the real spirit of poetry in their town 
habits, their narrow sphere of imagination, their knowledge of 
manners rather than natures, and their gross mistake about what 
they call classical, which was Horace and the Latin breeding, in- 
stead of the elementary inspiration of Greece." In a footnote to the 
same volume Hunt makes a discerning and important criticism: 
"Pope, whom I consider a much greater poet by nature than he 
became from circumstances, was shut up by his bodily infirmities 
within a small and artificial sphere of life. He saw little or nothing 
of nature and natural manners. When he went out, he rode, and he 
was even carried into his boat in a sedan-chair." 

It is easy to see how such an attitude would jar on the Holland 
House group of authors, all of whom lived a considerable part of 
their time in that very life of artificial manners which Hunt de- 
plored, all of whom for years had written Pope imitations, and most 
of whom were confirmed neo-classicists in theory. They believed 
that Pope was supremely great because of his life and theory of 
art; their opponents that he was approximately great in spite of 
these. Moore, who was a personal friend of Bowles, maintained an 
amiable neutrality; but Byron and Campbell flew to arms. 

This general tension was noticeably increased a little before the 
outbreak of 1819. In 181 7 Keats, in his beautiful but immature 
"Sleep and Poetry," made a most radical attack on the Pope tradi- 
tion. He called it 

[ 256 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

a schism 
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism; 

and told its adherents, 

Ye were dead 
To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed 
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule. . . . 
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! . . . 
Holding a poor, decrepid standard out 
Mark'd with most flimsy mottoes, and in large 
The name of one Boileau! 

As a picture of the late eighteenth-century Pope imitators this is 
not so unreasonable; as a picture of the Queen Anne wits them- 
selves it would be absurd. In any case, one can easily see how such 
lines would rouse the wrath of Byron. "There is no bearing the 
driveling idiotism of the mannikin," he cries; yet the minute that 
he believes Keats a convert to the orthodox literary faith he forgets 
and forgives. His indignation, he says, had been due to Keats's 
depreciation of Homer which "hardly permitted me to do justice 
to his own genius. . . . He is a loss to our literature, and the more 
so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded 
that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style 
upon the more classical models of the language." In 1818 Hunt 
said, "The downfall of the French school of poetry has of late been 
increasing in rapidity." In that same year Francis Hodgson pub- 
lished two poems in eighteenth-century style, "The Friends" and 
"Childe Harold's Monitor," both praising Pope. "The Friends" 
declared: 

Not yet the wholesome dread of thee was o'er, 

Proud wit! — but Dulness thrives, for Pope is now no more; 

and the notes attacked those critics who depreciated "this energetic, 
melodious, and moral poet." Meanwhile Byron, exiled and bitter 
at his age, was growing more and more ripe for war. In 181 7 he 
wrote to Murray: "With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, 

[ 257 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the more I think of it, that he [Moore] and all of us — Scott, 
Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, I — are all in the wrong, 
one as much as another; that we are upon a wrong revolutionary- 
poetical system, or systems . . . from which none but Rogers and 
Crabbe are free; and that the present and next generations will 
finally be of this opinion. I am the more confirmed in this by having 
lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I 
tried in this way, — I took Moore's poems and my own and some 
others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was 
really astonished (I ought not to have been so) and mortified at the 
ineffable distance in point of sense, harmony, effect, and even 
Imagination, passion, and Invention, between the little Queen Anne's 
man, and us of the lower empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace 
then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I 
would model myself accordingly." Coming as this does just when 
Byron was changing from a disciple of Wertherish romance to his 
greatest vein of satirical realism, it suggests that the discipleship to 
Pope was at least good for him. In 1818 he thought of defending 
Pope "against the world, in the unjustifiable attempts at deprecia- 
tion begun by Warton and carried on to and at this day." Conse- 
quently when Bowles and Campbell lit their matches in 1819 the 
powder was all ready for the explosion. 

Although Bowles's criticism was made soon after Austerlitz 
it produced no marked reaction until after Waterloo. The contro- 
versy was probably encouraged by the growing internationalism of 
literature and criticism, by echoes of literary battles on the continent 
fiercer than England ever knew. The critical warfare between 
classicists and romanticists in France was just beginning at that 
time, and a struggle of earlier origin in Germany was just becoming 
known to the British. Byron — whose entire part in the controversy, 
it must be remembered, was acted in Italy — wrote from Ravenna 
in 1820: "I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is 
a great struggle about what they call 'Classical' and 'Romantic,' — 
terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least 
when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English Scribblers, 
it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they them- 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

selves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but nobody 
thought them worth making a sect of." 

The number of magazine articles involved in the Pope-Bowles 
Controversy would seem to argue that the public felt some interest 
in the discussion. The gentlemen of the old regime were still fairly 
numerous; and the following speech, made by the aged painter 
Northcote some time before 1826, probably voiced the feelings of 
hundreds: "But consider how many Sir Walter Scotts, how many 
Lord Byrons, how many Dr. Johnsons there will be in the next 
hundred years; how many reputations will rise and sink in that 
time; and do you imagine, amid these conflicting and important 
claims, such trifles as descriptions of daisies and idiot-boys (how- 
ever well they may be done) will not be swept away in the tide of 
time, like straws and weeds by the torrent? No; the world can only 
keep in view the principal and most perfect productions of human 
ingenuity; such works as Dryden's, Pope's, and a few others, that 
from their unity, their completeness, their polish have the stamp 
of immortality upon them." 

The controversy was a symptom rather than a cause, a symptom 
of critical unrest. The great new poetry of the day was unpopular 
and even in its glory full of faults for which Pope would be a cor- 
rective. The popular poetry, by which the whole was too often 
judged, was genuinely decadent. Men were longing for a literary 
faith, and fearing to ground it on either the old or the new. Of the 
poets who had earlier imitated Pope, Byron and Rogers had turned 
away from his metre, however much indebted to his spirit. Camp- 
bell, on the contrary, who for twenty years had abandoned the 
couplet for ballad rhythm and Spenserian stanza, now returned to 
his old favorite— though, it is true, not to a very Augustan form of 
it— in "Theodoric" (1824). Among the poets who had earlier 
decried the Pope tradition, Keats just as the controversy began was 
taking Dryden as his metrical model, and Wordsworth was beginning 
to use rather frequently a modified form of the eighteenth-century 
metre. Coming at the end of a great creative period and at the 
beginning of a long barren one, the war of words had little influence 
on enduring literature. 

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i 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

For a modern reader, the most interesting features of the critical 
battle are the picturesque figures of Bowles and Byron, the one so 
pleasantly amusing, the other so tensely dramatic. "I like a row, 
and always did from a boy," cried the dark-eyed peer; and in 1820: 
"I mean to plunge thick, too, into the contest upon Pope, and to lay 
about me like a dragon till I make manure of Bowles for the top of 
Parnassus," As for Bowles, Moore found "the mixture of talent 
and simplicity in him delightful," but complains of "the character- 
istic weakness and maudlin wordiness of his notes," and describes 
finding him "in the bar of the White Hart, dictating to a waiter 
(who acted as amanuensis for him) his ideas of the true sublime in 
poetry; never was there such a Parson Adams since the real one." 

From the "Lyrical Ballads" to the death of Byron there is no 
period the creative works of which could be spared. But the years 
from 1824 to 1830 might be dropped bodily from our literature with 
little loss to poetry and only moderate loss to prose. No wonder 
The London Magazine fell from great literature to journalism when 
it met that chilling wave. It is with an Ossianic mood that the critic 
enters on these empty years, where the clinging ivies of Mrs. 
Hemans and L. E. L. rustle plaintively round the crumbling towers 
of romanticism. From 1824 to 1828 men bought poetry fairly well, 
though apparently rather through force of habit than through 
genuine enthusiasm. Then suddenly and sharply the sales of nearly 
all poetry fell with a thud. The year 1826 had been one of great 
commercial convulsion, affecting artists as well as business men; 
perhaps this financial blow pricked the bladder of conventionalized 
taste; but at any rate what happened is beyond question. 

In 1829 Jeffrey, out of his years of experience, wrote: "Since the 
beginning of our critical career we have seen a vast deal of beautiful 
poetry pass into oblivion, in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or 
retain it in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are 
already little better than lumber: — and the rich melodies of Keats 
and Shelley, — and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, — and 
the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, — are melting fast from the field of 
our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the 
splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, 

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POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

except where they have been married to immortal music; and the 
blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride. 
We need say nothing of Milman, and Croly, and Atherstone, and 
Hood, and a legion of others, who, with no ordinary gifts of taste 
and fancy, have not so properly survived their fame, as been ex- 
cluded, by some hard fatality, from what seemed their just inherit- 
ance. The two who have the longest withstood this rapid withering 
of the laurel, and with the least marks of decay on their branches, 
are Rogers and Campbell." In that same year Carlyle also declared 
that Byron too, "with all his wild siren charming, already begins 
to be disregarded and forgotten." The next year Wordsworth wrote 
to Rogers: ''He [Sharp] told me . . . that the sale of your 
'Pleasures of Memory,' which had commanded public attention for 
thirty-six years had greatly fallen off within the last two years. 
The Edinburgh Review tells another story, that you and Camp- 
bell . . . are the only bards of our day whose laurels are un- 
withered. Fools! I believe that yours have suffered in the common 
blight." In 1829 Southey complained: "The sale of my books in 
Longman's hands, where the old standers used to bring in about 
£200 a year, has fallen almost to nothing"; and in 183 1: "The sale 
of the works themselves is at a dead stop." Two other letters of 
Southey, in 1828 and 1829, show how trivial and superficial was 
even such interest in verse as remained. "With us no poetry now 
obtains circulation except what is in the Annuals ; these are the only 
books which are purchased for presents, and the chief sale which 
poetry used to have was of this kind." "At the best, Allan [Cunning- 
ham], these Annuals are picture-books for grown children. They 
are good things for the artists and engravers." 

In 1827 "The Shepherd's Calendar" of John Clare fell dead, 
though in 1820 his much inferior first volume had made him a nine 
days' wonder. Taylor undertook the later publication reluctantly, 
and warned Clare in advance that the taste for poetry was waning 
and the world demanding prose. The annuals, he said, had got the 
upper hand, and Clare had better write for them. These pretty toys 
were bought for their gilt edges and morocco bindings, the enclosed 
poetry being tolerated as a necessary evil. In 1833 a bookseller 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

told Clare that without such embellishments his poetry could not 
attract attention, since people were demanding the "high art" which 
the annuals furnished. The second part of Rogers's "Italy" in 1828 
came out almost unnoticed. Then he issued a magnificent "embel- 
lished" edition, with costly bindings, and illustrations; and, though 
it was probably very little read, several thousand copies were 
bought — as bric-a-brac. 

One variety of this literary type was the album, a silken Dagon 
to which Lamb bowed down in his "Album Verses" (1830). Three 
years earlier he had answered the question, What is an album? by 
describing it as 

The soft first effusions of beaux and of belles. 
Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L. E. L.'s. 

In 1825 Scott wrote in his diary: ''Nota bene. — John Lockhart, and 
Anne, and I are to raise a Society for the Suppression of Albums. 
It is a most troublesome shape of mendicity. Sir, your autograph — 
a line of poetry — or a prose sentence! — Among all the sprawling 
sonnets, and blotted trumpery that dishonors these miscellanies, a 
man must have a good stomach that can swallow this botheration 
as a compliment." Romantic medievalism, nature worship, and all 
the rest, had become part of the fashionable frippery for conven- 
tional young ladies. Praed in 1828 represents a miss of that type 
sending a "Letter of Advice" to her friend: 

Remember the thrilling romances 

We read on the bank in the glen; 
Remember the suitors our fancies 

Would picture for both of us then; 
They wore the red cross on their shoulder. 

They had vanquished and pardoned their foe — 
Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder? — 

My own Araminta, say "No!" . . . 
If he's sleepy while you are capricious, 

If he has not a musical "Oh!" 
If he does not call Werther delicious, 

My own Araminta, say "No!" . . . 
[ 262 ] 



POPULAR TASTE AND MINOR TENDENCIES 

If he speaks of a tax or a duty, 

If he does not look grand on his knees, 
If he's bhnd to a landscape of beauty, 

Hills, valleys, rocks, waters, and trees. 
If he dotes not on desolate towers. 

If he likes not to hear the blast blow, 
If he knows not the language of flowers. 

My own Araminta, say "No!" 

Such was the end of the age which Wordsworth began, Scott de- 
lighted, and Byron astounded. Annuals and albums! Keepsakes 
that none to-day will keep, and Forget-me-nots that time has for- 
gotten. Petty prettinesses in the midst of which even Letitia Landon 
would seem a poet. 

Scott formed only an apparent exception to this general blight. 
The recent collapse of his fortunes had made him an object of 
sympathy to thousands; the desire to help that proud spirit who 
refused all other forms of help was probably more influential than 
the love of literature in selling his later novels. Even at that, they 
had no such vogue as "Ivanhoe." The only literature of any merit in 
general demand was realistic prose or the acting drama, in both 
of which fields some laurels were gleaned by Mary R. Mitford. Miss 
Mitford's ''Our Village," which was in line with the realism of the 
Scotch minor novelists, was received with open arms. Her blank 
verse play "Rienzi," in which she anticipated Bulwer-Lytton, was 
a great success at Drury Lane theater in 1828, and if we may trust 
her statement, sold eight thousand copies in print within two months. 
At the same time she had a score of articles appearing in the 
annuals of the day. In 1832 the authoress was told that her 
name "would sell anything." But the triumph of humble prose, 
acting drama, and femininity only accented by contrast the decay of 
poetry, which was everywhere moribund. Wordsworth was increas- 
ing the number of his readers, but he was merely exchanging an 
extreme degree of unpopularity for a moderate one. 

And what of the new generation? Already by 1830 Carlyle, 
Macaulay, Disraeli, Bulwer-Lytton, and Tennyson had appeared 
in print. Few of them, however, had attracted attention; none of 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

them stood at that time for definite movements or well organized 
theories of art. They were drifting, drifting in the fog and night that 
had overshadowed the intellectual life of England. And even these 
men pubHshed nothing in that desert valley between 1828 and 1830. 
The great age of poetry was dead; but it had not been crowded out 
by new and more vigorous movements, for no such poetical move- 
ments had appeared. It expired in a vacuum. 



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CHAPTER XII 

Forty Tears of Satire^ Parody, and Burlesque 

It has often been declared that the early eighteenth century was 
the reign of satire and the mock-heroic; the early nineteenth that 
of serious poetry. The statement is far from being wholly wrong; 
yet it threatens to become what Tennyson called the blackest of 
lies, a lie that is half a truth. There was a great deal of satire, parody, 
or burlesque during the early nineteenth century. As a whole it was 
less brilliant than that of Queen Anne's day, and much better 
natured; it forms a smaller portion of the literary total; but as a 
factor in the literary life of the times it was much more important 
than anthologies would indicate. In the outlying districts, those rural 
nurseries of the great new poetry, there was less of it; but it thrived 
still around the big cities, and especially London. In verse it grad- 
ually evolved from the early couplet into new forms; and for that 
reason much which has already been included in the chapter on the 
Pope tradition might be given here. At times such poetry represents 
the hostility of one literary camp for another or the more righteous 
hostility of good literature for bad; at times mere love of fun; and 
often the effort of new literary schools to put brakes on their own 
over enthusiastic speeding. A brief survey of it may take the place 
of a summary for our book, both before and after the fall of Napo- 
leon, reviewing the literature of the romantic generation from a new 
angle of vision. 

The first great satirist just before and just after 1 790 was Burns. 
He has been justly hailed as the reviver of song, with some justice, 
perhaps, as the herald of romanticism; but we must not forget the 
judgment of Swinburne that Burns's greatest role was that of the 
satirist. He ridiculed literature very little; as a half-educated 

[ 26s ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

countryman he was in no position to see or realize its faults; but 
his attacks on the religious form the ''Hypocritiad" of English 
poetry. They are to "Tartuffe" as a Scotch broadsword to a Parisian 
rapier. 

Oh Pope, had I thy satire's darts, 

To gie the rascals their deserts, 

I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts, 

is just as truly Burns as the wail of "Highland Mary" or the wild 
mirth of "Tam O'Shanter." 

Poet Willie! poet Willie! gie the Doctor a volley, 
Wi' your "Liberty's chain" and your wit, 
O'er Pegasus' side ye ne'er laid a stride, 

shows that the Ayrshire lyrist was not so much gentler than the 
Twick'nam wit in handling the same type of men. 

The satire of Cowper we may pass over, as it had neither much 
effect nor great intrinsic merit; but we should not forget that he 
wrote it. Gifford's attack on the Delia Cruscan school of poetry 
in his "Baeviad" and "Maeviad" — which was using a tomahawk 
to crush an addled egg — has already been alluded to, as has also 
the "Rolliad." In connection with the latter appeared "Probationary 
Odes for the Laureateship," pretended competitors for the laurel 
of the recently deceased Whitehead. They are thus weaker fore- 
runners of the famous "Rejected Addresses," and like them a 
satirical survey of the poetical tendencies of the hour. Gray's open- 
ing lines in "The Progress of Poesy" and "The Bard" are bur- 
lesqued, as well as the "II Penseroso" school: 

Hence, loath 'd Monopoly, 
Of Av'rice foul, and Navigation bred, . . . 
But come, thou goddess, fair and free, 
Hibernian reciprocity. 

The "Song of Scrutina, by Mr. Macpherson" is a thrust at Pitt as 
well as at the author of "Ossian." "Leave not Pitto in the day of 
defeat, when the Chiefs of the Counties fly from him like the herd 
from the galled Deer. The friends of Pitto are fled. He is alone — he 
layeth himself down in despair, and sleep knitteth up his brow. 

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SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

Soft were his dreams on the green bench. Lo! the spirit of Jenky 
arose, pale as the mist of the morn." Then we have "A Full and 
True Account of the Rev. Thomas Warton's Ascension from Christ 
Church Meadow, Oxford," in which the learned poet of medievalism 
can make his balloon rise only by throwing overboard his own all 
too ponderous works. "I was fain to part with both volumes of my 
Spenser, and all of my last edition of Poems . . . which very 
quickly accelerated my ascension." 

By 1797 the false dawn of romantic poetry, represented in Mac- 
pherson, Warton, Collins, Chatterton, and the later work of Gray, 
had died out; and new types of poetry with new virtues and defects 
lay open to attack. The Anti-Jacobin was a brilliant and many- 
sided work, intended to be more political than literary; but its chief 
interest for us lies in its assaults on Erasmus Darwin's poetry and 
on popular German melodrama. In both of these it was doing what 
Pope had done a lifetime earlier, and what Thackeray did much 
later; for satire and romance, parody and sentiment are the eternal 
positive and negative poles of humanity, not the exclusive property 
of any age or literary school. We know of nothing more true and 
epigrammatic in Swift than The Anti-Jacobin's definition of an 
eighteenth-century didactic poem, "so called from didaskein, to 
teach, and poema, a poem; because it teaches nothing, and is not 
poetical." The "Loves of the Triangles," in a refreshing take-off on 
Darwin's flirtations between vegetables, pictures the fair H3^erbola: 

Quick as her conjugated axes move 
Through every posture of luxurious love . . . 
Unveil 'd, except in many a filmy ray, 
Where light Asymptotes o'er her bosom play. 

Of the anti-Teutonic "Rovers," which laughed Kotzebue's chivalry 
away, mention has been made elsewhere. Another passage from The 
Anti-Jacobin shows a widely prevalent and utterly wrong attitude 
toward certain literary men, due to their supposed political beliefs. 
After exalting Lepaux, a very minor French figure, to the fictitious 
dignity of representing the French Revolution and being brought 
into England by "Buonaparte's victor fleet," it continues: 

[ 267 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Rejoiced our clubs shall greet him, and install 
The holy Hunchback in thy dome, St. Paul! 
While countless votaries, thronging in his train. 
Wave their red caps, and hymn this jocund strain: 
"Couriers and Stars, Sedition's evening host, 
Thou Morning Chronicle and Morning Post, 
Whether ye make the Rights of Man your theme, 
Your country libel, and your God blaspheme, 
Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw. 
Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux. 

And ye five other wandering bards, that move 
In sweet accord of harmony and love, 
Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb and Co., 
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! . . . 

"Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye go. 
And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux! . . . 

''All creeping creatures, venomous and low, 
Paine, Williams, Godwin, Holcroft, praise Lepaux!" 

Then there is a barbed dart for the "sweet Sensibility" of the senti- 
mental novel and play, telling how Rousseau 

Taught her to cherish still in either eye, 
Of tender tears a plentiful supply. 

Meanwhile Ann Radcliffe's novels were on every shelf; and in 
"Northanger Abbey" Jane Austen's needle did for them what "The 
Rovers" had done for Kotzebue. As Lydia Languish proposed to 
enclose "The Innocent Adultery" in "The Whole Duty of Man," 
so Miss Austen's heroine would include "The Romance of the 
Forest" among the realities of a well-kept estate. Her favorite read- 
ing is "Udolpho," and while on a visit to a friend's house she makes 
a desperate effort to discover mysterious papers and haunted apart- 
ments, with disastrous effect on her faith in Mrs. Radcliffe. "North- 
anger Abbey" was written in 1803 as an attack on "Udolpho"; it 
appeared in 181 7, when it served almost equally well as a take-off 
on the novels and dramas of Maturin. 

Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (1809) is a 
nineteenth-century "Dunciad." 

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. 
[ 268 ] 



SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

Between twenty and thirty living authors are mentioned in it, a few 
with praise, most with ridicule. There is Fitzgerald with his "creak- 
ing couplets"; George Lambe's condemned farce; Pye, with whom 
it is worse to shine than "to err with Pope"; "roaring Southey"; 
"grovelling Stot"; "Marmion's" author, "Apollo's venal son"; "the 
simple Wordsworth" ; "gentle Coleridge, 

To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear"; 

"wonder-working Lewis"; "Hibernian Strangford"; Hayley, 
For ever feeble and for ever tame; 

"the Sabbath bard, Sepulchral Grahame"; Bowles, 
Thou first great oracle of tender souls; 

"Boeotian Cottle"; "dull Maurice"; James Montgomery, 
With broken lyre and cheek serenely pale; 

"Dibdin's nonsense"; "the mummery of the German schools," etc. 
The poem took well with the public, nothing but Byron's awakened 
conscience preventing a fifth edition in 1812. 

In 1 8 13 George Colman the Younger followed in Byron's wake, 
though with much less power, in his "Vagaries Vindicated," a satire 
on reviewers in Pope's couplet. The "Poetic Vagaries" themselves 
by the same author had appeared one year earlier, and were a col- 
lection of burlesque tales in various metres; one of them, "The 
Lady of the Wreck," being a parody on Scott's just published "Lady 
of the Lake." William Combe's "Tour of Dr. Syntax" was a Hudi- 
brastic take-off on the descriptive books of William Gilpin. It suc- 
ceeded wonderfully at the time, had many editions and several 
sequels, but now calls forth only the well-known comment of 
Polonius, "This is too long." 

In 1 81 2, the same year which produced Colman's and Combe's 
work, appeared a far greater one, the still enjoyable "Rejected 
Addresses" of James and Horace Smith. It begins with the assump- 
tion that the poets of the day have competed in writing addresses 
for the opening of Drury Lane Theater, and proceeds to give the 
rejected MSS. The "Baby's Debut" is fathered upon Wordsworth: 

[ 269 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Well, after many a sad reproach, 
They got into a hackney coach, 
And trotted down the street. 
I saw them go: one horse was blind. 
The tails of both hung down behind, 
Their shoes were on their feet. 

It should be noted, as a comment on the public attitude toward 
Wordsworth, that he is here, unlike most of the other victims, 
attacked for mannerisms belonging to a much earlier date. The 
world seemed usually to become acquainted with each one of his 
poems about a decade after it was published. The melancholy 
Spenserian stanzas of "Cui Bono" ridiculed, and also delighted, 
the author of ''Childe Harold." They are purposely put into close 
juxtaposition with lines assigned to the jovial Moore: 

why should our dull retrospective addresses 

Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane Fire? 
Away with blue devils, away with distresses, 
And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire. 

"The Rebuilding," by R. S., mimics in metre and other details "The 
Curse of Kehama" by Southey. The humorous wraith of Scott 
declares, 

My knees are stiff in iron buckles, 

Stiff spikes of steel protect my knuckles. 

"Fire and Ale," by M. G. L. (Matt Lewis), is in the easy rolling 
stanza of "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene." "Playhouse 
Musings," by S. T. C, shows that the public, which had no trouble 
in forgetting "The Ancient Mariner," had not yet gotten over the 
immature lines "To a Young Ass" written over fifteen years before. 

My pensive Public, wherefore look you sad? 

1 had a grandmother, she kept a donkey 
To carry to the mart her crockery ware, 
And when that donkey looked me in the face, 
His face was sad! and you are sad, my Public! 

There are also parodies on the "hoarse Fitzgerald" of Byron, W. R. 
Spencer, Crabbe, and others. The Smiths tried the same playful 

[ 270 ] 



SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

vein, though not quite as brilliantly, with "Horace in London" the 
following year. A sentence from the Preface of this volume shows 
that the authors were genuine admirers of the poets whom they 
ridiculed, and were actuated merely by love of fun or by a desire 
to give an over spirited Pegasus a little friendly grooming: "Had 
the authors of 'Rejected Addresses' listened to the voice of Pru- 
dence, they would have sat silent under the laurels they recently 
purloined from the brows of their betters, rather than have proved 
by advancing in propria persona into the Parnassus lists, how much 
easier a task it is to ridicule good poetry, than to write it." 

The same genial spirit animated James Hogg's "Poetic Mirror" 
(1816). One of the best proofs of this is that he, like Southey and 
Matt Lewis earlier, parodies himself. He had intended editing a 
collection of serious verse by his various fellow poets; but when 
that failed to materialize he fell back on a sheaf of good-natured 
parodies wholly from his own pen. "Childe Harold" is burlesqued 
in "The Guerilla," and the rhyming epistles in "Marmion" call jout 
the "Epistle to Mr. R. S.," Melrose, Teviotdale, August 3. One of 
the worst blind spots in the critical eye of Wordsworth showed itself 
in his choice of lumbering, discordant titles; and Hogg takes full 
advantage of this: "The Stranger; being a further portion of The 
Recluse, a Poem." "The Flying Tailor; being a further extract from 
The Recluse, a Poem." "James Rigg; another extract from The 
Recluse, a Poem." "Wat o' the Cleuch" imitates Hogg himself, and 
"The Curse of the Laureate," Southey. One of the best is "Isabelle," 
a take-off on the recently published "Christabel." 

Sounds the river harsh and loud? 
The stream sounds harsh but not loud. 
There is a cloud that seems to hover, 
By western hill the churchyard over; 
What is it like?— 'Tis like a whale; 
'Tis like a shark with half the tail, 
Not half, but third and more; 
Now 'tis a wolf, and now a boar; 
Its face is raised — it cometh here; 
Let it come — there is no fear. 

[ 271 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

There's two for heaven, and ten for hell, 
Let it come — 'tis well — 'tis well! 
Said the Lady Isabelle. 

The next year Frere published his Whistlecraft poem, later called 
"The Monks and the Giants," which launched the Italian movement 
in poetry and is in itself a burlesque on medieval life and romantic 
medieval poetry. 

Madoc and Marmionj and many more. 
Are out in print, and most of them have sold; 

and so Frere proposes to tell the story of King Arthur, whose 
knights were 

prepared, on proper provocation, 
To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick; 
And for that very reason, it is said. 
They were so very courteous and well-bred. 

Frere's poem, unlike that of Hogg, is in his most characteristic vein, 
that of the genial but quizzical urban wit. 

Laughter and tears do not lie nearer together than sympathy and 
ridicule may, when one is hitting the absurdities of a great and 
generous age. Thomas Love Peacock heaped unsparing abuse on 
many of his contemporaries, including his devoted friend Shelley; 
but one feels most of the time that whom Peacock loveth he chas- 
teneth. His early poetry is as serious as the dead, and like them 
need not be irreverently disturbed. He fell into his true vein in 1814 
with "Sir Proteus," "a satirical ballad" though not a great one, 
ridiculing Wordsworth, Coleridge, and John Wilson. His fame rests 
on his prose narratives, written in a tone of friendly banter toward 
his age. Four of them appeared between 181 6 and 1822, and two 
more in 1829 and 1831 respectively. At times Peacock becomes a 
Thackeray or masculine Jane Austen. In "Headlong Hall," Miss 
Cephalis Cranium "flew to the arms of her dear friend Caprioletta, 
witih all that warmth of friendship which young ladies usually 
assume toward each other in the presence of young gentlemen." 
At times the author uses the microscope of Swift, only he holds it 

[ 272 ] 



SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

before an amused instead of a jaundiced eye. Mr. Cranium in his 
lecture on phrenology says very incidentally: "Here is the skull 
of a Newfoundland dog. You observe the organ of benevolence, and 
that of attachment. Here is a human skull, in which you may observe 
a very striking negation of both these organs; and an equally 
striking development of those of destruction, cunning, avarice, and 
self-love. This was one of the most illustrious statesmen that ever 
flourished in the page of history." "Mr. Dross," as we are told in 
"Melincourt," "was a tun of a man, with the soul of a hazel-nut: 
his wife was a tun of a woman, without any soul whatever. The 
principle that animated her bulk was composed of three ingre- 
dients — arrogance, ignorance, and the pride of money. They were, 
in every sense of the word, what the world calls respectable people." 

Peacock felt at once the charm of what was best in medieval 
romance and the absurdity of its extremes. Both moods appear in 
the opening of "Melincourt." "Melincourt Castle had been a place 
of considerable strength in those golden days of feudal and royal 
prerogative, when no man was safe in his own house unless he 
adopted every possible precaution for shutting out all his neigh- 
bors. . . . An impetuous torrent boiled through the depth of the 
chasm, and after eddying round the base of the castle rock, which 
it almost insulated, disappeared in the obscurity of a woody glen, 
whose mysterious recesses, by popular superstition formerly con- 
secrated to the devil, are now fearlessly explored by the solitary 
angler, or laid open to view by the more profane hand of the pic- 
turesque tourist." We are told that "the turrets and battlements 
were abandoned to the owl and the ivy"; and the traditional ruined 
wing is reported as peopled with ghosts, despite the incantations of 
the Rev. Mr. Portpipe, "who often passed the night in one of the 
dreaded apartments over a blazing fire with the same invariable 
exorcising apparatus of a large venison pasty, a little Prayer-book, 
and three bottles of Madeira." The rest of the castle was still in- 
habited; "and while one half of the edifice was fast improving into 
a picturesque ruin, the other was as rapidly degenerating, in its 
interior at least, into a comfortable modern dwelling." 

Miss Danaretta Pinmoney, a young lady very romantic in literary, 

[ 273 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

and very hardheaded in matrimonial matters, cries out regarding 
the heiress of Melincourt: "Nay, I think there is something delight- 
fully romantic in Anthelia's mode of life; but I confess I should like 
now and then, peeping through the ivy of the battlements, to observe 
a preux chevalier exerting all his eloquence to persuade the inflexible 
porter to open the castle gates, and allow him one opportunity of 
throwing himself at the feet of the divine lady of the castle, for 
whom he had been seven years dying a lingering death." Inciden- 
tally the preux chevalier would have had more chance with Miss 
Danaretta if he had been seven years in the banking business. 

Lord Monboddo's pioneer work in anthropology, Rousseau's 
return to Nature, and political corruption in England, are all hit 
at once in Sir Oran Haut-ton. He is an orang-outang, a model of 
silent good breeding, who by education becomes a perfect gentle- 
man, a rescuer of abducted ladies, a baronet and M. P. for the 
borough of One-Vote. Ballad collectors and imitators are ridiculed 
in the person of Mr. Derrydown. "One day, in a listless mood, taking 
down a volume of ^The Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' he found, or 
fancied he found, in the plain language of the old English ballad, 
glimpses of the truth of things, which he had vainly sought in the 
vast volumes of philosophical disquisition." As a result, he "passed 
the greater part of every year in posting about the country, for 
the purpose, as he expressed it, of studying together poetry and 
the peasantry, unsophisticated nature and the truth of things." 

"Nightmare Abbey" offers a curious contrast to Jane Austen's 
"Northanger Abbey." Peacock has more masculine violence in the 
thrust of his rapier yet more imaginative sympathy with the very 
atmosphere the excess of which he ridicules. The melancholy of 
Ossian and Werther, Gothic ruins, and heroines in disguise, are held 
up as the amiable absurdities of youth. The hero, Scythrop, is 
Peacock's friend Shelley, not the mature poet of the Italian days, 
but the young disciple of Ann Radcliffe. "Here would Scythrop take 
his evening seat, on a fallen fragment of mossy stone, with his back 
resting against the ruined wall, — a thick canopy of ivy, with an 
owl in it, over his head, — and the 'Sorrows of Werter' in his hand. 
He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the Uni- 

[ 274 ] 



SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

versity, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was 
cured of the love of reading in all its shapes." At the end of the 
story, Scythrop, who has made love to two young ladies and lost 
them both, orders a pint of port and a pistol, saying, "I will make 
my exit like Werter." But he soon changes the order for a boiled 
fowl and Madeira. 

Mr. Cypress is Byron, whose made-to-order melancholy was a 
universal subject of parody, and is here deftly held up as an un- 
reasonable though not ridiculous mood in the well-known song: 

There is a fever of the spirit. 

The brand of Cain's unresting doom. 

Southey, — whose supposed time-serving tendencies had already 
been attacked in the poet Mr. Feathernest of "Melincourt," — 
appears again as Mr. Sackbut. 

Peacock had no great reverence for "that egregious confraternity 
of rhymesters, known by the name of the Lake Poets"; and his 
favorite victim was Coleridge. He appears in "Melincourt" as 
Mr. Mystic of Cimmerian Lodge, where 

The fog was here, the fog was there, 
The fog was all around. 

" 'I divide my day,' said Mr. Mystic, 'on a new principle: I am 
always poetical at breakfast, moral at luncheon, metaphysical at 
dinner, and political at tea.' " The second incarnation of Coleridge 
is as Mr. Flosky in "Nightmare Abbey." "Mystery was his mental 
element. He lived in the midst of that visionary world in which 
nothing is but what is not. He dreamed with his eyes open, and saw 
ghosts dancing round him at noontide." He declares that "mystery 
is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is 
sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental psy- 
chology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery." And we are 
told that the Rev. Mr. Larynx would "lament the good old times 
of feudal darkness with the transcendental Mr. Flosky." 

It is true, of course, that in "The Rejected Addresses," in Hogg, 
and in Peacock, one finds mere fun or a friendly corrective rather 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

than the envenomed satire of Pope and Swift. It is also true that 
some of the same kindliness appeared in Queen Anne's time in 
Prior, Gay, and Addison. If we wish for a satirist not quite as gloomy 
and bitter as "Gulliver," but often of similar temper, we can find 
him in the later Byron, Like Swift he had once moved in brilliant 
society in England, though, it is true, in a more commanding posi- 
tion. Like Swift he had been driven into an exile more voluntary 
but far from happy. His relations with women, enough unlike in 
many ways, had tiiis in common with those of Swift that for both 
the end had been bitterness. The Byron of "Don Juan," it is true, 
has by no means lost faith in all humanity. There is genuine pathos 
in Julia's letter: 

Men have all these resources, we but one, 
To love again, and be again undone. 

This becomes doubly intense at the death of the really innocent 
Haidee. The rough soldiers at Ismail honor Juan for saving a little 
girl in the charge. The robber who assaults Juan on his arrival in 
England dies bequeathing a keepsake to "Sal." Even in conven- 
tional English society, the author's pet aversion, there is Aurora 
Raby, 

sincere, austere, 
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd. 

But in general, Byron the rake like Augustine the saint seemed to 
beheve that ninety-nine one-hundredths of humanity should be 
damned. 

And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk 
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. 
And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
'Tis that I may not weep. 

He may still have admired the beauty, but he had certainly learned 
the practical inadequacy of that idealism voiced by George Sand: 
"Since when has it been obligatory for the novel to be a transcrip- 
tion of what is, of the hard and cold reality of contemporary men 
and things. . . . What I should like to write is the human pastoral, 

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SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

the human ballad, the human romance. . . . I . . . feel impelled 
to paint him [man] as I wish him to be, as I believe he ought to 
be." Don Juan answers: 

But now I'm going to be immoral; now 

I mean to show things really as they are, 
Not as they ought to be: for I avow. 

That till we see what's what in fact, we're far 
From much improvement. 

The satire on bad poetry has the temper, though not the style, of 
"The Dunciad." Southey at the gate of heaven 

ceased, and drew forth an MSS.; and no 
Persuasion on the part of devils, or saints, 
Or angels, now could stop the torrent; 

and as he recites 

The angels stopp'd their ears and plied their pinions; 
The devils ran howling, deafen'd, down to hell. 

"Wordsworth's last quarto" is 

A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the "Excursion," 
Writ in a manner which is my aversion. 

Then we have a hit in the opposite direction at 

Aristotle's rules, 
The Vade Mecum of the true sublime. 
Which makes so many poets, and some fools. 

Byron follows the "Voyage to Laputa" in his attack on impractical 
education. Donna Inez taught Juan 

The languages, especially the dead, 

The sciences, and most of all the abstruse. 

The arts, at least all such as could be said 
To be the most remote from common use. 

Byron's picture of war is not so pessimistic as that given by Gulliver 
to the Brobdingnagian king, for Byron was a born fighter and felt 
that the game was often worth the candle; but the sordidness, 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

brutality, and horror he draws with an equally unflinching hand. 
Suwarrow, the great military hero of Russia, is 

Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt, 
Praying, instructing, desolating, plundering. 

The dazzling conqueror 

Turns out to be a butcher in great business. 
Afflicting young folks with a sort of dizziness; 

and as for the private, fame and 

Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroying. 

It is the probe of "Lilliput" that Byron applies to courts and 
diplomacy: 

Now back to thy great joys. Civilization! 
And the sweet consequence of large society. 

War, pestilence, the despot's desolation. 
The kingly scourge, the lust of notoriety. 

The millions slain by soldiers for their ration. 
The scenes like Catherine's boudoir at threescore. 
With Ismail's storm to soften it the more. 



He sees 



What Anthropophagi are nine of ten 

Of those who hold the kingdoms in control. 



Maintain'd with all the due prevarication 
With which great states such things are apt to push on. 



Juan's diplomatic business between Russia and England is 

Maintain'd with all the due 
With which great states ; 

His English friend, Lord Henry 

was a great debater, 
So that few members kept the house up later. 

Among the many portraits of corruptible peers at Norman Abbey, 

here and there some stern high patriot stood. 
Who could not get the place for which he sued. 

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SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

If there are times when poetic glamour is thrown around sex 
passion in a manner unknown to Swift, there are others that strip 
it away as remorselessly as the hand that drew the Yahoo. Gulbayez, 
Catherine II, and the Duchess Fitz-Fulke all demonstrate that 

love is vanity, 
Selfish in its beginning as its end, 
Except where 'tis a mere insanity. 

Though Byron's "desultory rhyme" with its "conversational 
facility" is unlike enough the barbed epigrams of Queen Anne, he 
can, when he wishes, be pithy and poisonous as they. If a faithless 
sultana had been drowned in a sack, 

Morals were better, and the fish no worse. 

Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone. 

Pitt, the incorruptible, 

as a high-soul'd minister of state is 
Renown'd for ruining Great Britain gratis. 

Whether Byron as a poet be greater in the romantic or the satiric 
vein, as a thinker he stands immeasurably higher in the latter role. 
Goethe declared him a child when he reflected, from which moder- 
ately true criticism there has been drawn a false corollary that 
Byron's poems lack intellectual weight. On the contrary, the chief 
appeal of "Don Juan" is to the intellect. Reflection is only one side 
of mental activity; observation is the other; and Byron was a 
keener, more penetrating observer than any other poet of his age. 
In "Don Juan" he amassed materials to keep a hundred philosophers 
thinking. He never asks himself, like Shakespeare, Browning, and 
George Eliot, why people act as they do; but he is always asking 
precisely how they do act. He has the eye of a hawk for every incon- 
sistency, for every departure from a poet's imaginary norm. He 
equals Homer, 

If not in poetry, at least in fact; 

And fact is truth, the grand desideratum! 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Besides, my Muse by no means deals in fiction: 
She gathers a repertory of facts, 

he tells us. Erratic thinker though he was, he was a pioneer for 
modern realists, of the type which he himself describes: 

'Tis strange, — but true; for truth is always strange; 

Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, 
How much would novels gain by the exchange! 

How differently the world would men behold! 
How oft would vice and virtue places change! 

The new world would be nothing to the old, 
If some Columbus of the moral seas 
Would show mankind their souls' antipodes. 

Life had trained him for such a task as it had trained no other of 
his contemporaries. 

Talk not of seventy years as age ; in seven 

I have seen more changes, down from monarchs to 

The humblest individual under heaven, 
Than might suffice a moderate century through. 

Byron has so much of mockery and pose that one dare not always 
believe him; but, if we can trust the closing lines of "The Dream," 
the mood of his last years had all too much in common with that 
of St. Patrick's embittered dean: 

but the wise 

Have a far deeper madness, and the glance 

Of melancholy is a fearful gift: 

What is it but the telescope of truth. 

Which strips the distance of its fantasies. 

And brings life near in utter nakedness. 

Making the cold reality too real? 

Both had studied the dark side of life to the exclusion of the bright 
one; but both had examined their field with "the telescope of truth," 
and had made profound discoveries in detail, even if they pictured 
utter falsehood in general proportions. Their greatness came, not 
from imagination or reflection, but from observation and experience. 
The only language which could truly express what they had found 
was satire. 

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SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

Byron — he said it himself — wrote as the tiger leaps. Turning 
from "Don Juan" to the satires and parodies of Tom Hood, or his 
collaborator Reynolds, is like turning from the spring of a tiger 
to the gambols of a kitten. Reynolds's "Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad," 
just barely anticipated in print the poem of Wordsworth which it 
parodied, a poem which later moved to burlesque even the serious- 
minded Shelley. Hood has his good-natured though hardly friendly 
hit at Southey, 

Mounted on Pegasus — would he were thrown! 
He'll wear that ancient hackney to the bone. 

His "Ode to the Great Unknown" handles the Waverley novels 
with facetious irreverence, though with outspoken admiration. The 
end of his "Stag-Eyed Lady" parodies the conclusion of Moore's 
"Fire- worshipers"; and his "Irish Schoolmaster" revives the mock- 
grandiloquent Spenserian stanza of the mid-eighteenth century. 
"Mary's Ghost" is a laughing echo of "Sweet William's Ghost," 
"The Wife of Usher's Well," and other folk poetry. The popular 
vogue of Moore is pictured amusingly in "The Wee Man." In the 
"Ode to Mr. Graham" Hood looks down from Fancy's aerial car 
on the literary world of London and realizes its true pigmy nature 
in playfully satiric vein. 

What's Rogers here? Who cares for Moore! 

Come: — what d'ye think of Jeffrey, sir? 
Is Gifford such a Gulliver 
In Lilliput's Review? 

Now say — ^Is Blackwood's low or not? 

Now, — like you Croly's verse indeed? 

And, truly, is there such a spell 
In those three letters, L. E. L., 

To witch a world with song? 
On clouds the Byron did not sit. 
Yet dared on Shakespeare's head to spit, 

And say the world was wrong. 
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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Campbell — (you cannot see him here) — 
Hath scorn 'd my lays: — do his appear 
Such great eggs from the sky? 

All this was before 1828. Many years later in "Love and Lunacy" 
Hood burlesqued the moon-worshiping romantic heroine in Ellen, 
who almost lost her Lorenzo because, being short-sighted, she mis- 
took the new illuminated clock for the poetic luminary. In the same 
volume "There's No Romance in That" rings the merry knell of 
the sentimental medieval vogue in literature: 

days of old, O days of Knights, 
Of tourneys and of tilts. 

When love was balk'd and valour stalk'd 
On high heroic stilts! . . . 

1 wish I ne'er had learn'd to read, 
Or Radcliffe how to write; 

That Scott had been a boor on Tweed, 
And Lewis cloister'd quite! 
Would I had never drunk so deep 
Of dear Miss Porter's vat; 
I only turn to life, and weep — 
There's no Romance in that! . . . 
On Tuesday, reverend Mr. Mace 
Will make me Mrs. Pratt, 
Of Number Twenty, Sussex Place — 
There's no Romance in that. 

Hood and Reynolds were romantic poets who liked fun at a 
friend's expense. Praed was essentially a modern Prior. He could 
not have written the luxurious "Garden of Florence" or the mys- 
teriously impressive "Haunted House." His best work in society 
verse lies on the border both of our present subject and of our 
period, and may be better discussed by others. Nevertheless mention 
should be made here of his medieval verse narratives, which form 
about one-fourth of his poetry, and were mainly written during the 
decade following 1820. At times they are wholly burlesque, at others 
half burlesque and half serious, suggesting a mental attitude not 

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SATIRE, PARODY, AND BURLESQUE 

unlike that of Peacock. Medieval Germany, the times of King 
Arthur, and of Coeur de Lion are all laid under contribution. 

Sir Isumbras was ever found 

Where blows were struck for glory; 
There sat not at the Table Round 

A knight more famed in story. 
The king on his throne would turn about 

To see his courser prancing; 
And, when Sir Launcelot had gout. 

The queen would praise his dancing. 
He quite wore out his father's spurs, 

Performing valor's duties — 
Destroying mighty sorcerers. 

Avenging injured beauties. . . . 
And minstrels came and sang his fame 

In very rugged verses; 
And they were paid with wine and game. 

And rings, and cups, and purses. 

The tone here reminds one of Frere's "The Monks and the Giants," 
and is the product of a similar environment. Praed, like Frere, 
moved in the best society, and, though not a Londoner, lived in the 
London region. The same laughing consciousness of life's unromantic 
realities gives savor to "The Legend of the Teufel Haus." Sir 
Rudolf, like King Arthur in "The Bridal of Triermain," blows a 
trumpet at the gate of an ancient castle; but — alas! for the romantic 
reader — when the white-robed seneschal comes out in answer, 

He stayed not to ask of what degree 

So fair and famished a knight might be; 

But knowing that all untimely question 

Ruffles the temper, and mars the digestion, 

He laid his hand upon the crupper, 

And said, — "You're just in time for supper." 

The satires and burlesques of Peacock, Praed, and Hood lead 
one well beyond 1830; and by the time that they were ready to lay 
their mantle down the shoulders of Thackeray were ready to receive 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

it. The technical medium through which satire is uttered changes 
continually; but the spirit of it is ever with us; and the amount, the 
brilliance, the venom of it varies with the extent of those contem- 
porary follies which evoke it, depends on them fully as much as on 
the critical theories of the day. 



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PART III 
GENERAL DISCUSSIONS 



CHAPTER XIII 

Romanticism^ Classicism, and Realism 

Of making many definitions there is no end; and now that the 
elusive sunbeam has been resolved into the colors of the spectrum, 
perhaps the yet more elusive glory of poetry may be similarly 
analyzed. To date, however, we cannot feel that this task has been 
very successfully done; and our own handling of the problem aims 
at a modest discussion rather than a final settlement. Professor 
Beers has mapped out valid boundaries for one type of literature, 
the medieval-romantic. Equally valid boundaries could be fixed for 
a certain type of harsh realism, including the poems of Crabbe and 
various novels of his day. It is comparatively easy to separate from 
their fellows certain poems on Greek subjects handled in a lofty, 
self-contained spirit, and call them classical; such poems as Words- 
worth's "Laodamia," Keats's "Hyperion," and Landor's "Hellenics." 
Unfortunately these classifications, however valid in themselves, 
leave the major part of early nineteenth-century literature unac- 
counted for. Moreover they represent certain traditional paths of 
thought to which many great poets turned occasionally, but which 
very few follow consistently; so that, except in such writers as 
Crabbe, Scott, and Landor, their presence can hardly be considered 
proof of a romantic, realistic, or classic temperament. 

How did the "romantic generation" itself define romantic poetry ? 
The answer to this question, however pertinent, is far from satis- 
factory. The phrase was often used to voice an impressionistic 
criticism of some particular work, much more rarely to describe any 
literary type; for both uses definitions were few, conflicting, and 
never generally accepted. Among border antiquaries the "romantic 
ballad" was one handling unreal and often supernatural material 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

from the past. It was a similar conception, apparently, which Tom 
Warton had in mind in the middle of the eighteenth century, when 
he wrote: 

Some more romantic scene might please; 
Or fairy bank, or magic lawn, 
By Spenser's lavish pencil drawn: 
Or bower in Vallambrosa's shade, 
By legendary pens pourtrayed. 

With a similar attitude, Coleridge in "Biographia Literaria" prac- 
tically defined his own share of the "Lyrical Ballads" as romantic 
and Wordsworth's part as realistic. His own poems were to deal 
with "persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic." 
Wordsworth, "on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his 
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day," and 
direct his reader's mind "to the loveliness and wonders of the world 
before us." Such was the conception of "romantic ballad" followed 
by Scott in 1802 and by Motherwell in 1827. This definition was 
fairly clean-cut and was used consistently by a dozen writers; but 
it applied mainly to literature handed down from the past, and fre- 
quently was not accepted by those same authors for contemporary 
verse. 

In 1805 John Foster, a one time somewhat prominent essayist, 
published a monograph "On the Application of the Epithet Ro- 
mantic." He discusses the word mainly as applied to human char- 
acter, wherein "it imputes, in substance, a great excess of imagi- 
nation in proportion to judgment; and it imputes, in particulars, 
such errors as naturally result from that excess." Something is said 
about the use of the term for medieval romances but almost nothing 
about its application to contemporary literature. One passage, how- 
ever, would fit excellently the poetry of Blake, which Foster could 
hardly have known, or that of Shelley, which was not yet written. 
In the case of the romantic person, we are told, "the whole mind 
may become at length something like a hemisphere of cloud scenery, 
filled with an ever-moving train of changing, melting forms, of every 
color, mingled with rainbows, meteors, and an occasional gleam of 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

pure sunlight, all vanishing away, the mental like this natural 
imagery, when its hour is up, without leaving anything behind but 
the wish to recover the vision. And yet, the while, this series of 
visions may be mistaken for operations of thought, and each cloudy 
image be admitted in the place of a proposition or a reason; or it 
may even be mistaken for something sublimer than thinking." 

In 1 813 Scott and Erskine, in the Introduction to "The Bridal 
of Triermain," gave their definition of romantic poetry, "the popu- 
larity of which has been revived in the present day, under the 
auspices, and by the unparalleled success, of one individual." 
"According to the author's idea of Romantic Poetry, as distin- 
guished from Epic, the former comprehends a fictitious narrative, 
framed and combined at the pleasure of the writer; beginning and 
ending as he may judge best; which neither exacts nor refuses the 
use of supernatural machinery; which is free from the technical 
rules of the Epee; and is subject only to those which good sense, 
good taste, and good morals apply to every species of poetry without 
exception. The date may be in a remote age, or in the present; the 
story may detail the adventures of a prince or of a peasant. In a 
word, the author is absolute master of his country and its inhabi- 
tants, and everything is permitted to him, excepting to be heavy or 
prosaic, for which, free and unembarrassed as he is, he has no 
manner of apology." Two facts are to be noticed about this defini- 
tion: it is practically that of the French critics, "romanticism is 
merely liberalism in literature"; and it is meant to apply only to 
long narrative poems. Scott, apparently, had not thought of Words- 
worth's lyrics as either romantic or unromantic. 

In 1814 the "De L'Allemagne" of Madame de Stael, publication of 
which in France had been forbidden by Napoleon's censor, was 
printed in England in both French and English versions. The gifted 
authoress, that "whirlwind in petticoats," was at the time a lioness 
in English literary society; and her work is a part of English, as 
well as of French, literary history. Her book contained a chapter 
entitled "Of Classic and Romantic Poetry," derived mainly from 
her German trip and association with the Schlegels. It opens with 
an explanation of the new term: "The word romantic has been 

[ 289 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

lately introduced in Germany to designate that kind of poetry which 
is derived from the songs of the Troubadours; that which owes its 
birth to the union of Chivalry and Christianity." Classic poetry is 
defined as "that of the ancients, and romantic, or romanesque 
poetry, as that which is generally connected with the traditions of 
chivalry," a definition which was practically equivalent to that of 
Heine, and which fitted a larger segment of the German Romantic 
Movement than of the English, 

After the fall of Napoleon much foreign criticism percolated into 
English thought. In 1816 Hazlitt reviewed in The Edinburgh a 
translation of A. W. Schlegel's lectures, and adopted as his own 
certain definitions of the great German critic. In the words of 
Hazlitt, "the most obvious distinction between the two styles, the 
classical and the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with 
objects that are grand or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence 
of obvious and universal associations; the other, with those that 
are interesting only by the force of circumstances and imagination. 
A Grecian temple, for instance, is a classical object: it is beautiful 
in itself, and excites immediate admiration. But the ruins of a 
Gothic castle have no beauty or symmetry to attract the eye; and 
yet they excite a more powerful and romantic interest from the 
ideas with which they are habitually associated. If, in addition to 
this, we are told that this is Macbeth's castle, the scene of the mur- 
der of Duncan, the interest will be instantly heightened to a sort of 
pleasing horror." The definition of romanticism as the poetry of 
associations has this advantage, that it would include at once 
Wordsworth's "Thorn," the "Cadyow Castle" of Scott, and Blake's 
lines on a thistle: 

With my inward eye 'tis an Old Man gray; 
With my outward a Thistle across my way. 

Another closely overlapping definition of Schlegel was adopted 
almost in his words by Coleridge two years later in "Characteristics 
of Shakespeare's Dramas," where we are told that the literary pro- 
ductions of the ancient Greeks were "statuesque, whilst those of 
the moderns are picturesque." Yet the conception of Schlegel, 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

though approved by Hazlitt and Coleridge, does not seem to have 
been generally adopted or even widely discussed in England, nor 
was that of de Stael's "De L'Allemagne." 

If the commonly used word "romantic" was so ill understood, is 
it any wonder that the much rarer adjective "classic" was used with 
equal indefiniteness? Schlegel had pointed out the great difference 
between ancient Greek poetry and the neo-classic writings of Pope 
and Racine. Leigh Hunt and others, whether independently or as 
Schlegel's disciples, had done the same. But although they saw what 
Greek literature was not, they were only beginning to see what 
it was; and here also their passing attempts at definition are like 
the footmarks of one groping in a fog. 

As to realism, the romantic generation did not feel with anything 
like the intenseness of our own age a cleavage between that and 
romanticism. Rather they felt that reality was often the essence 
of romanticism. "I have some idea," wrote Byron, "of expectorating 
a romance, or rather a tale in prose, — but what romance could equal 
the events — 

quae ipse . . . vidi, 
Et quorum pars magna fui?" 

This was in 1813. A decade later in "Don Juan" he declared: 

truth is always strange, 
Stranger than fiction. 

About the same time Hazlitt said in "Table Talk": "This is the 
test and triumph of originality, not to shew us what has never been, 
and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but 
to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though 
we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient 
strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain 
it. Rembrandt's conquests were not over the ideal, but the real." 
In 1830 Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton: "A careful observer of 
life, Bernard, has no need to invent. Nature romances it for him." 
On the mingling of seeming realism and romanticism in Wordsworth 
and the Scotch writers there is no need of dwelling. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

The romantic generation was much more definite in marking the 
distinction between itself and the age of Pope. The phrase "romantic 
school" was almost unknown, that of "romantic poetry," besides 
being rather rare, was vaguely and inconsistently defined; but the 
labels "new school" and "new poetry" were applied often and 
pretty consistently in the prose of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, 
and Hunt. The "new school" consisted of the "Lakers" and the 
"suburban" poets. Yet the chief marks of the "new poetry" in the 
eyes of its members were only in part those which are usually asso- 
ciated with "romanticism," comprising merely the return to natural 
scenery and homely truth, the simplification of poetic language, and, 
to a less extent, the revival of the Greek spirit. The wild witchery 
of "Christabel," the 

elfin storm from fairyland 

in "The Eve of Saint Agnes," are tacitly passed over as incidentally 
connected with the new tendency, not typical of its principal aims. 
Scott and Byron were neither included in the "new school" nor 
definitely assigned to the old. At bottom the reforms on which the 
"new school" of poets insisted were less distinctions between lit- 
erary types than between good and bad poetry in general. Their 
main object of hostility was not Pope, whom they read and even 
admired more than most people to-day, but the decadent Pope 
imitators of the late eighteenth century. In a sense the age of enthu- 
siasm was reacting through them against the age of reason; but four 
decades of sentimentalized literature lay between the two ages as 
a buffer kingdom and deadened the shock. The main reaction was 
against the senile old age of literary traditions which in the days of 
Dryden had been young and vigorous. Lamb, Hazlitt, and Hunt 
often admired the Augustans, but would probably have said with 
Tennyson : 

The old order changeth, giving place to new, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

If the critics of the period give so little help in forming defini- 
tions, can anything further be learned from the popular taste of 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

the time? In some ways, very little. If by the romantic generation 
is meant the reading public, not the little lonely groups of unappre- 
ciated geniuses, then an attempt to define the nature of its prefer- 
ences would be like an attempt to photograph the changing old man 
of the sea. Hazlitt condemned the spirit of the age for "its love of 
paradox and change, its dastard submission to prejudice and to the 
fashion of the day." In 1828 Carlyle spoke of the preceding half- 
century as "fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste." 
The most consistent feature of literary feeling in the public was its 
indifference to those authors who are usually called the greatest 
"romantic" poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and 
Shelley. If its dicta have any value whatever, they would place the 
above-mentioned men in a different literary category from those 
who pleased where they offended, from Byron and Moore, and from 
Scott, with whom, more than with any one else, the adjective 
"romantic" was associated during his lifetime. 

Early nineteenth-century comment on the nature of romanticism 
is only slightly more instructive than the remarks of King Leodo- 
gran's chamberlain. The scholarly verdicts of more recent years 
demand greater respect, but leave one with very indefinite conclu- 
sions. The German literary historians, beginning with Heine and 
de Stael, have emphasized more than others in their conception of 
romanticism the revival of the Middle Ages, because that revival 
played a much larger part in the literature of the "romantische 
Schule" than in that of French and British contemporaries. The 
disciples and forerunners of Victor Hugo collided with an intel- 
lectual despotism in poetry to which there was nothing comparable 
in Great Britain and Germany; so naturally the French critics, 
from Hugo to our own day, have emphasized liberalism in literature 
as the dominant note of romanticism. In England, definitions, like 
the phenomena which they were intended to define, have been mor j 
vague and various. The medieval movement formed only a part of 
the whole. In general, critics who tried to grasp the entire age 
under one formula have laid emphasis on the "return to nature" 
or the "renascence of wonder." Although nobody will deny the fact 
that these definitions vaguely shadow forth something which really 

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took place, yet an attempt to apply them in detail shows that they 
often become meaningless and often misleading. 

Can the problem not be viewed from another angle, with less 
emphasis on the poem as a finished work of art and more on the 
forces which produced it? A literary movement is made up of indi- 
vidual literary men moving in certain directions. How would any 
one of those individuals be reacting if we could study his mind in 
the working? For example, what were the more significant and 
definable forces working on the brain of Keats while he was writing 
"The Eve of Saint Agnes," and are there not four which stand out 
beyond the others? 

In the first place there is the social influence of the literary group 
with which the poet happens at that time to be affiliated. The fre- 
quent beauty and occasional unmanliness of the "Cockneys" 
appear in line after line. In the second place there is the inborn 
personality of the individual poet, accentuated and developed by 
such early surroundings as have tended to make him unlike his 
fellows. "The Eve of Saint Agnes" is full of touches that could have 
come from no other poet in English literature, notes peculiar to the 
timbre of the instrument, to the individual outlook of the soul. 
Thirdly, beyond his own personality and beyond his own little 
circle, every poet feels the all-pervading spirit of his age, the literary 
Zeitgeist. The weak minor drives before its breath like a derelict, to 
meet shipwreck on some contemporary fad. The great author, 
charting his course in the light of a deeper vision, now scuds with 
all sails before that contemporary blast, now tacks laboriously 
against it, but never can sail for long as if it were not there. It is 
his task, as it is the task of every intellectual leader, to make the 
most that he can out of the vast blind forces among which his time 
has thrown him; to curb their peculiar faults even if he first 
becomes the arch-sinner in learning how to curb them; and to 
develop their peculiar virtues. Though Keats was perhaps less a 
creature of his age than any of his contemporaries, Professor Elton 
has truly said that "he could hardly have lived at any other epoch 
and written as he did." And, fourthly, there is the influence of the 
literary tradition which the poet follows, in this instance the tradi- 

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tion of Spenser, which a hundred major or minor poets had followed 
before him, and which a hundred have followed since. The great 
poet in his chamber finishes the last magazine article on contem- 
porary thought, and lays that and the present on his shelf together. 
He takes down Spenser or Beaumont, and for him antiquity grows 
modern. The spirits of the old masters cannot be laid; and if their 
dead bones are continually being exhumed by pedants and poet- 
asters, their living souls continually revisit the glimpses of the moon 
in the best of new poetry. 

Of the influence of literary groups we have already said enough. 
Concerning that rare individuality which is each poet's peculiar 
birthright much might be said, were there any one on earth wise 
enough to say it. But though the imagination loves to dwell on this 
theme of poetic psychology, the reason shrinks from writing a 
learned monograph about it; would fain let that field remain for 
the present a beautiful terra incognita, not yet invaded by methodi- 
cal research. 

The successive Zeitgeists and various literary traditions offer a 
more legitimate field for systematic analysis. They run across each 
other, lengthwise and breadthwise of time, like the warp and woof 
of a tapestry, across which the complex embroidery of literary move- 
ments is woven. The Zeitgeist in Pope's day was that of the age of 
reason, negative, critical, inculcating good taste and chilling emotion. 
During the life of Gray, the inevitable reaction had produced an 
emotional Zeitgeist, the harvest of which was sentimental novels, 
lachrymose comedies, poetry that mourned among graveyards or 
wailed over non-existent kingdoms of Morven. Then came the 
Zeitgeist of the romantic generation, which retained much of this 
emotional element, but fused with it a growing intellectual activity, 
the positive intellectual curiosity of the early nineteenth century, 
as opposed to the negative intellectual criticism of the early eight- 
eenth. That too had its day; and then followed the age of Tennyson, 
more chastened in its enthusiasms, more mature in its intellectual 
analysis, more tame and conventional in its ideals. 

Across these far-reaching variations in literary attitude, modify- 
ing them and being modified by them, run any number of literary 

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traditions. There is the tradition of Spenser, which can be traced 
without a break, through a few great poems and innumerable bad 
ones, from Pope's ''Alley" to Tennyson's "Lotus-Eaters." There is 
the tradition of the neo-classic couplet, which runs from Waller 
through Pope, and through innumerable Pope imitators, to die on 
the hands of Moore and Rogers and come to life again in the verse 
of Austin Dobson. There is the Miltonic tradition, which involves 
most of the blank verse in the eighteenth century; which is respon- 
sible for many a dull epic that should have been entitled "Poetic 
Inspiration Lost"; which trails across parts of "The Excursion," and 
resumes some of its ancient glory in "Hyperion." There is the great 
tradition of medievalism, — at times involved with the Spenserian, 
but often separate, — which first became prominent with the Wartons 
and has gone on uninterruptedly ever since, appearing to-day in 
novels by Maurice Hewlett and poems by Alfred Noyes. There are 
the traditions of Dante and the Elizabethan drama and the literature 
of Greece, all negligible in the eighteenth century but prominent 
and clearly traceable in the nineteenth. 

Now, whatever be one's definition of romanticism, it is obvious 
that differing degrees of that quality will be found in the inherent 
natures of different poets, in the atmospheres of different social 
groups, in the dominant influence of different traditions, and in the 
prevailing spirit of different Zeitgeists. When one considers that 
three or four of these forces act together in the production of almost 
any great poem, and that they can be combined in varying degrees 
and in an astonishing number of ways, one grows rather skeptical 
about dividing the resulting product according to any two or three 
categories. Let us adopt temporarily a conception of romanticism 
approximately that of Mr. Arthur Symons and the late Mr. Watts- 
Dunton. Then "Christabel" was the product of a romantic soul 
following a romantic tradition among a mildly romantic group in a 
romantic age, and comes naturally by its character as one of the 
most romantic of poems. Pope's "Essay on Criticism," one of the 
most neo-classic of English masterpieces, was written by a man of 
neo-classic temperament, following a neo-classic tradition, in a neo- 
classic age and in an unromantic social environment. But between 

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these two extreme poles there are any number of transitional stages. 
The early eighteenth-century Spenserians, whose romantic qualities 
have been much disputed, followed a romantic tradition in an un- 
romantic age. Most of the poetry of Rogers reveals a neo-classic 
spirit moving among a partially neo-classic group, writing usually 
after a neo-classic tradition in a distinctly unAugustan period. "The 
Excursion" combines some of the virtues of Milton himself and 
many of the faults of his dull imitators with qualities unknown to 
both, qualities which are due to Wordsworth's own individuality 
or to the mental currents of his day. The late eighteenth-century 
imitators of Pope followed an Augustan tradition in a sentimental 
period. 

The four forces which have seemed the most important to us may 
not seem so to all, and are obviously not the only ones in the vast 
complexity of life. They do, however, represent the four lines along 
which literary historians have mainly studied romanticism. The 
works of Professor Beers are primarily a study of literary tradi- 
tions, especially the great medieval tradition, which became unques- 
tionably romantic in the early nineteenth century, doubtfully so 
later on in Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy" or Reade's "Cloister and 
the Hearth," and clothed with the old glamour in still more recent 
work by Hewlett and William Morris. Arthur Symons's "Romantic 
Movement" aims primarily at a study of the author's inherent 
nature. "I have tried to get at one thing only," he says in the 
Preface, "the poet in his poetry, his poetry in the poet." The nature 
of the prevailing literary spirit in Wordsworth's day has been the 
subject of various essays and volumes, which have found the 
common element of that spirit in the return to nature, the revival 
of wonder, the love of solitude, or some kindred quality. The present 
book has attempted to supplement these works by a study of the 
fourth factor, not because of any exaggerated idea as to its influence, 
but because it had been least considered. 

That the four factors mentioned exist no one will dispute. Are 
they all among the deep things of poetry or are most of them only 
surface currents, ripples a few inches deep on an unfathomable 
sea? Mr. Symons would incline to the latter belief, and says causticly 

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that "critics or historians of poetry are generally concerned with 
everything but what is essential in it." At the other extreme one 
finds critics like Professor Courthope, Brunetiere, and the late M. de 
Gourmont. "Works are to be studied, without too much importance 
being given to their writers, and we are to be shown how these works 
give birth to one another by natural necessity; how from the species 
poetry are born the varieties sonnet and madrigal; how, under the 
influence of surroundings, the lyrical variety is transformed, without 
losing its essential characteristics, into eloquence, with many further 
metamorphoses." Great as are the woes which neutrals must 
undergo, we cannot honestly take any but a middle ground. We 
believe with Mr. Symons that all true poetry is in its deepest essence 
one and indivisible, that it is the one white ray of light from an 
eternal sun; but we see that white beam only through the stained 
glass windows which prejudice and education have built around us, 
through which it steals in half a hundred differing hues; and we 
cannot believe that the study of that stained window through which 
poetry shines discolored on the kneeling soul is as trifling as the 
study of bygone flounces and furbelows. It may be true that an 
ideally perfect literary mind would find in all genuine poetry of 
all ages 

The healing of the seamless dress. 

But the history of literature, even when dealing with the greatest 
poets and critics, is not one of ideally perfect literary minds. That 
the most poetical Englishmen of the eighteenth century should 
have had their eyes blinded to the grandeur of Dante, that the 
most poetical sons of France for two hundred years should have 
had their minds poisoned against Shakespeare, — are such facts 
beneath a historian's notice? Or take those influences which we 
have just enumerated. When an enthusiastic boy poet has 
finished reading "The Faerie Queene," "The Castle of Indolence," 
"Adonais," and "The Lotus-Eaters," and kindles from their fire, 
is it so unliterary to attribute to him the emotions which Keats felt 
on opening Chapman's "Homer," to consider his connection with 
the Spenserian tradition a notable event? When Wordsworth 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

declared that his sister gave him eyes and ears for the poetry of 
the universe, are we necessarily unpoetical in tracing the influence 
of associates on genius? When Scott declared that he would die if 
he did not see the heather once a year, did he think that landscape 
influences meant nothing to a literary soul? And what of the spirit 
of the age? Is it not the chief mark of a true poet that he tries to 
find the beautiful, the wonderful, the true in the universe around 
him? Does not every new age dig up some new treasures of thought 
and feeling, mixed with a vast mass of new refuse and folly? Is 
it not his part to grasp the new emotional treasure and winnow it 
free from its accompanying fads and errors ? And is there not often 
some of this ephemeral error left clinging around his treasure, 
making posterity misjudge him unless it understands the field in 
which he had to work? Would it be fair to Congreve if we let for- 
eigners read his plays as the product of a godly age or to "Paradise 
Lost" if we interpreted it as the product of nineteenth-century 
philosophy? These external forces exist and go deep into poetry, 
though there may be other things deeper still. Of the four forces, 
the poet's inborn nature perhaps is the one most connected with his 
imperishable work, the other three more often being related to 
superficial qualities or ephemeral successes. It by no means 
follows, however, that this field is the most profitable for the 
literary historian. In such matters the great poet is often his own 
best interpreter. 

Now it may be that all these crossing and mixing threads represent 
only two kinds of mental fiber, variously disguised; that a whole- 
sale division of literature into two or three categories is still 
possible. Personally, however, we cannot feel that this is true; nor 
do we think that our generation feels so. Every one recognizes a 
certain basic unity, not in all good poetry, perhaps, but in all poetry 
the goodness of which he really appreciates. Once rise above that 
into the realm of more superficial divisions, and they become, not 
twofold nor threefold, but manifold. It is true that in any particular 
period these many literary characteristics will often be found 
divided into two camps; but the line of division between the two 
camps keeps changing from generation to generation. The simple 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

elements are forever being re-sorted into new combinations; the 
new group adopts devices from its literary ancestors and from their 
enemies as well; the individual poet even may become a veritable 
Proteus, true perhaps to one deity but repeatedly changing his ritual 
of worship. As the great political parties, the Whigs and Tories, the 
Republicans and Democrats, under unchanging names have repre- 
sented ever changing policies, so "Romanticism," "Classicism," and 
"Realism," even when the differences between them have been 
clearly felt, have been in a process of continual transmutation. As 
Macaulay tells us that the Whig and Tory parties exchanged parts, 
like the man and the serpent in Malebolge, so the "Romanticism" 
which revolted against eighteenth-century poetic diction has been 
called to book for its own artificial language by modern realism. 

If attempts to pigeonhole the literature of four thousand years 
and a hundred peoples prove somewhat unconvincing, the task of 
distinguishing between great literature in the age of Pope and that 
in the age of Wordsworth is, on the contrary, almost too easy. The 
distinction is obvious, and already so well known that it needs no 
further discussion. There remains, however, a fairly important 
question: Does the great change in the literary product represent 
a corresponding change in national taste, or does it rather represent 
a change in the representation of different tastes at the literary 
parliament? Much might be said for the latter theory. The fathers 
of Coleridge and the Warton brothers showed markedly un- 
Augustan tendencies long before their sons blazed the new trail. 
The nineteenth-century revival began in regions where the eight- 
eenth-century theories had never borne rich harvests. If the age of 
Pope left us only one type of enduring poetry, it may be less because 
all poetic spirits thought that way than because incipient poets of 
other natures were forced into silence, by criticism, by economic 
pressure, by educational conditions, and by spiritual starvation. 
Through vast tracts of Great Britain among minds full of latent 
poetry, the age of Queen Anne made a solitude and called it Taste. 

In the early nineteenth century, on the contrary, the general 
atmosphere encouraged literature of many types. Even those 
varieties which met with few purchasers and hostile reviews felt 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

in the air a breath that gave them life. In no other period of English 
literature have so many classes, localities, and races at one time 
been represented by poets of distinction. Their birthplaces and 
residences dot the islands of Great Britain from end to end and 
from side to side, in marked contrast with both the Elizabethan and 
Augustan periods. The natural result was that the spirit of the age 
was one of complexity and variety, not one of harmony and stand- 
ardization. The common intellectual element of the age lay in its 
all-pervading curiosity, not in the directions along which that 
curiosity worked nor in the literary credos with which it might be 
connected. This curiosity might explore the monuments of the past, 
the hopes of the future, the riches of a familiar landscape, or the 
dim vistas and picturesque costumes of remote countries; working 
along these diverging lines it might produce types of literature 
differing from each other as much as they all did from Pope; it 
remained the one mental link which bound the conservative Scott 
to the revolutionary Shelley, the domestic Wordsworth to the 
wandering Byron. Emotionally the common bond was in general 
fulness of emotion rather than in the fact that this emotional rich- 
ness was always of the same kind. Enthusiasm was considered the 
mark of inspiration where it had once been the mark of bad taste; 
but Wordsworth did not share Sir Walter's enthusiasm for border 
peels, Southey abhorred the revolutionary enthusiasms of Shelley, 
and Byron was nauseated by the early heart's outpourings of Keats. 
In the literature of the age the unity — such as one finds — was the 
unity of poetic fervor, not the supremacy of any one poetic genus. 
Much of the confusion about the definitions of "romanticism" is 
due to the fact that the same word has been used to label a literary 
type and a literary movement; and the two phenomena, though 
often related, are fundamentally distinct. When Vesuvius burst into 
eruption and overwhelmed Pompeii, the eruption was one definite 
thing; but the chemical constituents of the lava and ashes which it 
ejected were numerous and varied. Similarly before and after 1800 
there was a great literary eruption throughout western Europe. 
There is no reason why one should not call this the Romantic 
Movement, if one wishes. But the literature which it poured out 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

on an astonished world was not of one type nor two, but of 
many. Fragments were in it of the old neo-classical peak that the 
eruption had blown to pieces, dark ash-clouds of Gothic romance, 
metals from ancient veins unworked for centuries, the flowering 
turf of humble realism, and wild lavas from the caverns of the 
mystic far underground. If "romanticism" was a movement it in- 
volves a study of many literary types through one short period of 
their development; if it is a literary type, such as the medieval 
verse tale, it involves a study of that type reaching across several 
movements but forming only a small part of each. Either conception 
is legitimate in itself, but the two fields of study cannot bear the 
same title without producing confusion. The confusion becomes 
worse confounded when one tries to overlay these two conceptions 
with a third, not implied in them, that the products of all move- 
ments and of all types can be sorted into two classes, of which one 
is and the other is not romantic. In this last conception our age 
shows little faith. Books developing the other two — however we 
may lament the confusion of terminology — have proved a valuable 
addition to the history of human thoughts and ideals. 

One last question may be thrown out for future thought, though 
no one at present could give it an adequate answer. What is the 
relation of either the "romantic" generation or "romantic" tradi- 
tions to mysticism? There is a half -proved, plausible theory that 
waves of scientific, realistic thought alternate in man's history with 
waves of mysticism, periods in which thousands live in a world of 
their own emotions and visions as the spider in a universe drawn 
from his own bowels. Unquestionably there was a great deal of 
mysticism in certain periods of the Middle or Dark Ages and very 
little in the early eighteenth century. Was the romantic generation 
a reversion to this attitude? As regards the German Romantiker 
and the unpopular English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Blake 
and Shelley, it probably was. On the other hand, the popular English 
writers and the public whom they pleased declared themselves 
intolerant of this very element. Like the mystic they sought emo- 
tional experience; but unlike him they wished to derive it from a 
world exterior to themselves, from a genuine past, as in the case of 

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ROMANTICISM, CLASSICISM, AND REALISM 

Scott, from the hard-headed photography of Crabbe, or from 
observant travel as in the case of Byron. Stray glimpses of another 
mood may flash across ''Childe Harold," but they are only transi- 
tory. Among the later pre-Raphaelites the deep mystic feeling of 
Christina Rossetti is in marked contrast with the cheery bustle of 
William Morris the man or with the sensuous languor of his verse. 
Poetry that is usually considered romantic and that betrays occa- 
sional gleams of mysticism is combined in Tennyson with enthu- 
siasm for a great scientific age. Wordsworth was at once more 
mystic and more scientific than Byron. 

In general, literary movements do not run exactly parallel to the 
national thought wave of the time, but vibrate above, below, and 
around it like overtones in music; and the thought wave itself 
grows ever more complex with the increasing complexity of life. 
Both the romantic generation and the medieval tradition have 
relations to mysticism; but they are not identical with it, and the 
exact nature of their relationship is hard to grasp. A certain tj^e 
of medieval mysticism, found in Blake and the German Baader, 
was one among the many elements hurled up by the great literary 
eruption; in the case of Wordsworth, Shelley, Christina Rossetti, 
and Francis Thompson the problem becomes much more involved; 
and even Blake was much more than a mere revival of Boehme. 



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CHAPTER XIV 

The Survival of the Fittest 

The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The critics and the schools depart; — 

and what remains? Not always that which the age had expected to 
see endure; not always what was most representative of its general 
temper; not always those works of even the greatest poets on which 
they had most set their hearts. Is it always even that which most 
deserved to last? We hope so, but in common honesty we must 
remember how much conventional cant is implied in that phrase — 
the verdict of posterity. That survives which is best fitted to endure 
in an existing, not necessarily in an ideal environment. Moreover 
posterity, like other supreme tribunals, feels no hesitation in 
reversing its own decisions, and, contrary to popular belief, is con- 
tinually doing so. Measured in terms of actual enthusiasm, not of 
hidebound tradition, the reputations of Aeschylus, Dante, and 
Milton go waving up and down as well as those of the last magazine 
favorite, only varying at such high altitudes that they never quite 
touch oblivion. Nothing is static; nothing is firmly settled; and the 
great liners as well as the little cock-boats rock up and down on 
the restless, ever changing hearts of men. It is true that with the 
passing years we learn more of the facts about each author, the veil 
of misconception and partial knowledge is removed; but the veil 
of divergent tastes remains and often grows more impassable as 
the years put us farther and farther from the dead man's point of 
view. Our knowledge of facts improves annually as the bibliogra- 
phies enlarge; but in matters of taste what right have we to con- 
sider ourselves so much wiser than a past generation? What is called 
the verdict of posterity to-day is really in part the verdict of the 

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THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

twentieth century and in part the verdict of earlier decades, which 
the twentieth century has been too lazy to analyze. Is our own age 
so much more discerning in matters of poetry than the age of Words- 
worth, — especially in America? Are college professors to-day more 
discerning than John Wilson? Are the contributors to The Dial 
and The Nation more reliable than Southey, Lamb, and De Quincey? 
Above all, are our modern poets more sound in their esthetic sense 
than Coleridge and Keats? There is a certain wisdom which comes 
from the mellowing influence of time; there is a certain advantage 
in having a great man appeal from the reading multitude to the 
judgment of the inner circle; there is a wholesome checking influence 
which each generation exercises on the vagaries of the others; but 
at best this verdict of posterity is unreliable enough. Yet, such as 
it is, we give it, the testimony of one very humble and fallible man 
as to what many great authors meant to him and apparently to 
his age. 

Are the great writers alone those who should be classed among 
the permanently valuable? In our opinion, no. Minors are of many 
kinds, hundreds of whom should be dropped through the sieve of 
time, but a few retained. There are grave poetasters, such as 
Hayley, who would bore us if they could, but shall not. There are 
delightful absurdities of the type of George Dyer, who lives forever 
in Lamb's gentle ridicule, and never lived in his verses. There are 
men of commanding intellect in other lines, eighteenth-century 
doctors and clergymen without number, who have turned out unin- 
spired verses as a cultural by-product. All of these may be profit- 
ably left to oblivion. There remains another type whose members 
the present writer, for one, would not willingly forget, a type not 
comic but tragic, and appealing through neglected stanzas with all 
the sincerity of tragedy. Such a man was John Clare, who, without 
any of the intellectual massiveness which rnarks a great poet, yet 
gives one the impression of a remarkably poetical attitude toward 
life, and makes us find the world sweeter and better because a 
century ago he pottered here among his meadow flowers. Such a 
man was Beddoes, the victim of lifelong melancholia, who impresses 
readers and impressed himself as the broken torso of a giant that 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

might have been. However imperfect their work, the generations 
would be poorer without it. 

Several such interesting minors can be found in Ireland. In that 
country there were no literary groups and few traditions; her sons 
were groping lonely in the darkness; but there was a literary move- 
ment. After the sleep, or rather the stupefaction of centuries, the 
national muse of the Irish began to stir uneasily in her slumber; 
and the poetry that her children had hitherto produced only in 
England began to be audible on her own soil. The beginners prob- 
ably had more poetry in their hearts than they have left us on paper. 
They broke against an iron barrier, and too often took to drink in 
despair. Among them was Dermody, who died in 1802, and Callanan 
one generation later. Their verse is thin and limited in pitch, but 
with true lyric tears and laughter in it. A more impressive figure, 
because better balanced, was T. C. Croker. In Scott's description 
of him, "little as a dwarf, keen-eyed as a hawk, and of easy, pre- 
possessing manners," one finds small kinship with the broken Celtic 
genius of the Dermody, Maginn, and Mangan type. His prose 
"Fairy Legends," published in 1825, were translated into German 
by the Grimm brothers, with whom the author was a friendly 
correspondent; and several parallels to Croker's Irish tales are 
found in the continental Marchen of the Grimms. Throughout these 
"Fairy Legends" and the subsequent "Legends of the Lakes" one 
revels in Celtic love for the unseen mixed with Celtic irreverence 
and humor. There are beautiful visions of the land of eternal youth 
under the Killarney Lakes, grimly grotesque pictures of decapitated 
fairies tossing their heads about, and wild incidents which the 
reader may at discretion attribute to either the devil or the black 
bottle. 

In turning to the greater names, one encounters at the start two 
writers who were almost ciphers to their own age, who had no part 
in its currents and eddies, no niche in its long reviews, but who 
have outlived the perishable glory of so many a favorite, and, 
without a place in earlier chapters, must have an honorable one 
here. It would be hard to imagine a more isolated figure than William 
Blake. He offered the public while he was still a young man certain 

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THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

noble lyrics which few read, fewer understood, and nobody dis- 
cussed. He saw Hayley, Bloomfield, Mrs. Hemans, Procter, and 
"L. E. L." hailed as authors of promise while he was ignored as a 
nobody. During his creative period as a poet he came in touch with 
no other great author of his age, with no author of any standing 
save Hayley. When he was well over fifty and the song was burnt 
out of him, he crossed for a moment the lives of Lamb, Southey, 
Coleridge, and Wordsworth, roused a brief spasm of enthusiasm in 
some of them by his poems, and seems to have dropped promptly out 
of their minds. Coleridge, who is reported to have sold a thousand 
copies of Cary's "Dante" by a single lecture, apparently never 
mentioned Blake's name in public, though in one or two letters he 
praised highly certain lyrics, including ''The Tiger." Leigh Hunt, 
who may never have heard of Blake as a poet, printed in his 
Examiner savage attacks on Blake the artist, calling him "an un- 
fortunate lunatic," and lamenting his "bad drawings" and the 
"deformity and nonsense" of his work. This great, lonely visionary 
died at the age of seventy, three years after the death of Byron, 
little known as an artist and almost utterly unknown as a poet. 

Yet the history of his mental development connects in many 
ways with the currents of his age, much more so, for example, than 
in the case of Landor. His first volume, "Poetical Sketches," is a 
cento of the new literary tendencies in the late eighteenth century. 
Influences are there from Thomson's "Seasons," from the Spen- 
serians, from the Elizabethan revival, from Chatterton, from the 
Norse translations of Gray, from the Gothic current, and from 
"Ossian." In his later and more mystical work he diverges far from 
most of these tendencies, but retains unquestionable links of thought 
with that age which knew him not. His chief tie is through his dis- 
cipleship to Jacob Boehme. This Austrian shoemaker and visionary, 
a belated survival of the medieval mystics, left his trail across most 
of the German Romantiker, his influence being clearly traceable 
in Novalis, in Tieck, in Brentano, and in a minor romantic philoso- 
pher Baader, who devoted years to the study and elucidation of 
his writings. Blake resembled Boehme, and in part at least imitated 
him, in general mysticism, in many details of poetic symbolism, and 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

in childlike simplicity of language. As a result of this common 
derivation, aided more or less by likenesses of temperament, there 
is a vague similarity between some of Blake's poetry and Novalis's 
"Henry of Ofterdingen," for example. Perhaps a common debt to 
some form of German mysticism accounts also for occasional like- 
nesses between Blake and Wordsworth. Both projected great, 
rambling epics dealing with 

the Mind of Man — 
My haunt, and the main region of my song. 

In both there is often an attitude toward nature similar to that 
voiced by the German romantic painter Runge: "We see or should 
see in every flower the living spirit which the man puts into it, and 
through that the landscape will come into being, for all animals 
and flowers are only half there, as soon as the man ceases to 
furnish the chief part. . . . When thus in all nature we see only 
our own life, then first, obviously, the right landscape is bound to 
result." Certain temperamental likenesses can also be traced between 
Blake and Shelley, on whom no common external force appears to 
have acted, likenesses in revolutionary spirit, in abstractness, in 
lyric purity. But the very qualities which mark Blake as in some 
ways a child of his age are those for which his age ignored him. So, 
like one of his own mythical characters, he died in the nineteenth 
century, feeble and solitary, to come to life in the twentieth, a giant 
in perpetual youth. 

Blake to-day is the victim of an enemy from whom he was least 
in danger in his own day, a fad of overpraise; and regarding some 
of his more imperfect work both enthusiasm and condemnation 
have gone wild. None the less, when this passing vogue is over, he 
will still endure. He was blind to vast tracts of experience, knowl- 
edge, inspiration; but what he did see he saw through a glorified, 
poetic atmosphere. Reading his poems is like being on a mountain 
top: first, a wild exhilaration, then a sense of giddiness and loneli- 
ness, of the absence of the human element, a longing for warm fire- 
sides in valleys far below. For this reason, few people, we believe, 
will ever make him a life companion as they do Burns and Keats 

[ 308 ] 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

and the greater Shakespeare. But that wild and transitory exhilara- 
tion, however unsatisfying alone, has its place in the needs of a 
great literature, a place which no other poet has filled so well. 
Blake stands also for the triumph of poetic faith, a proof that not 
poverty, nor neglect, nor hostility, nor the shut-in routine of poor 
laborers in cities can rob a man of artistic vision if he once has it 
in his soul. In some respects his genius had even more to overcome 
than that of Burns, who lived among beautiful landscapes while he 
moved among sidewalks and garrets. But the divine instinct would 
not down; and if the poetry might at times have been better under 
more favorable conditions, the struggles of the man toward his 
ideal would have been less of a triumph for poetry. 

Not quite so unpopular as Blake but equally isolated from the 
literary currents of her age, and more out of sympathy with its 
spirit was Jane Austen. "Considering how easily the heights of 
celebrity were stormed at that time, and especially by a woman, 
it is most remarkable that Jane received no encouragement, and 
had no literary society, and not one literary correspondent in the 
whole of her lifetime." That is the testimony of one biographer. 
According to another, "there is no evidence in the memoirs of her 
time that any distinguished person ever found himself in her com- 
pany, her name did not appear on the title pages of any books, she 
was almost unknown outside of a small provincial circle, and in that 
circle no one seems to have had any idea that there was anything 
specially remarkable about her." When it was proposed that she 
should attempt an historical romance she wrote back: "I am fully 
sensible that (such a romance) might be much more to the purpose 
of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country 
villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than 
an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious 
romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it 
were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laugh- 
ing at myself or at any other people, I am sure I should be hung 
before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own 
style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed 
again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Most of her life was passed, and nearly all her writing done, in the 
quiet little Hampshire villages of Steventon and Chawton. As Blake 
worked on calmly in his isle of dreams, mystic and idealist amid the 
turbid currents of decaying neo-classicism, so she went her un- 
troubled way in her little provincial world, while medieval and 
Oriental and Wertherish romance raged unheeded without. Being 
a great reader, she caught through books many glimpses of the 
changes in contemporary life; but her immediate environment was 
a little unprogressive back eddy of thought, and she found therein 
something more congenial than the wild rush of the new. 

Though the French Revolution had turned so many other eyes 
on the condition of the poor, Miss Austen ignores them with gentle 
ladylike conservativeness. All her heroes and heroines are from the 
respectable middle class. While Napoleon was ruminating an inva- 
sion of England from Boulogne, she was poking fun at Ann Rad- 
cliffe in "Northanger Abbey." The Weltschmerz of her great French 
contemporary George Sand would probably have made her open 
mild eyes of wonder if she had lived to read it. Why should one be 
so unhappy in a world where there were always pleasant dances 
to go to, and foolish people to laugh at, and pretty dresses, and 
jewelry — and husbands — and other objects of virtu, in the acquire- 
ment of which one could show one's ingenuity, and in the selection 
of which one could show one's taste? Hers was in many ways an 
Augustan type of mind, femininely Augustan; and in that gentle, 
polished, yet trenchant face we seem 

to feel 
The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel. 

Miss Austen's favorite poet was Crabbe; and although he was 
a popular writer and she an unpopular one, in some ways he also 
was an isolated figure. After his wife's death in 1813 he became 
acquainted with various literary men, including Rogers, and in 
1822 he visited Scott, with whom he had been for years in friendly 
correspondence. But up to his sixtieth year, during all his best 
creative period, he had been a lonely figure, utterly out of personal 
contact with the great writers of the time. How far this affected 

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THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

his style we cannot know; his natural limitations were very marked; 
he had been fifteen years old when Wordsworth was born and had 
formed his taste in a bygone age. Yet the best realistic work of the 
period, that of Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, and Crabbe, was 
produced in literary isolation; and the most realistic of Words- 
worth's poetry was the outcome of his most solitary days. Before 
1820 the tendency of the literary groups was away from downright 
contemporary realism. This insulated and uneventful existence no 
doubt encouraged, though it obviously could not wholly have caused, 
the fatal lack of versatility in Crabbe, for whom there was only one 
metre that he could handle, only one social class, and only one 
mood. The relation of his complete poems to his first triumph, "The 
Village," is the relation of an elongated telescope to a telescope 
shut together; the complete works are longer, but contain no poetical 
appeal that was not at first in the early poem. It is true that with 
advancing years "the crab-apple softened"; but it is a question if 
this increasing mildness did not weaken a poet whose stern veracity 
was his only stock in trade. 

How far Crabbe at times tried other literary veins we do not 
know. During his twenty-year silence he wrote much which the 
unfavorable comment of friends led him to destroy. Whether the 
consumed manuscripts were inferior Parish Registers or abortive 
ballads and Gothic romances, his friends have neglected to state. 
"Sir Eustace Grey," written somewhere during this interval, in 
metre, wildness, and love of the morbid differs noticeably from the 
earlier and later poems, though this also can be considered as a 
realistic scene in a madhouse. 

Byron bracketed Crabbe with Rogers and Campbell as the three 
men who had remained true to the Pope gospel ; and in his last years 
the aged clergyman visited his fellow spirits occasionally, but their 
intercourse, never very frequent, began too late to account in any 
way for common elements in their verse. Moreover, their likenesses 
were rather in details than in spirit; Rogers's world of elegant 
bric-a-brac was far enough from the harsh materials of which "The 
Borough" was compounded. Perhaps the cordial welcome which 
Crabbe received from his public could be explained by his unlikeness 

[ 311 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

to all contemporary poets; in their romantic feast he was the 
pinch of salt which, unpalatable in itself, made the whole mixture 
palatable. 

We prefer to think of Burns as lying on the border of our field; 
yet much of his best poetry, including "Tarn O'Shanter" and "The 
Jolly Beggars," was written after 1790; and a word must be granted 
him. Like Crabbe he was a popular but isolated figure; unlike 
Crabbe he belonged to no great literary tradition, but was the giant 
of a puny race, following paths blazed by almost forgotten poets. 
The trail of his imitators is even more obscure than the trail of his 
predecessors. Though his lyrics marked the sunrise of a great lyrical 
period, his songs have little in common with those of his chief fol- 
lowers except the pure singing quality. The song poetry of Shelley, 
Wordsworth, Scott, Blake, and even Moore deals only incidentally 
with 

Praise of love or wine, 

which were the chief themes of Burns, as they had been those of the 
Elizabethans. Unlike the learned authors of his time, he had few 
theories about either literature or politics; and those which he had 
were borrowed and often bad. If he helped blaze the way of reform, 
it was not because he bore the torch of new traditions, but partly 
because poverty and the green fields had insulated him from old 
traditions that were decadent, partly because the new enthusiasm 
in the air made his public give the encouragement which would not 
have come twenty years before. 

His work is imperfect enough often. There were callous spots in 
his brain as there were in his hands, and produced by similar causes. 
But though one finds imperfect taste in him often enough, one 
almost never finds the perverted taste, the doctrinaire wrongheaded- 
ness, which wrecked so much in the pages of Wordsworth and Blake, 
Southey and Byron. There is a wholesome sanity about this product 
of the furrow and the meadow, a healthy good sense, which is not 
identical with culture yet goes far toward taking the place of it. 
He may often disappoint, but he never bores or antagonizes. And 

[ 312 ] 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

when he is at his best, he leads us, not among the pupils of Rousseau, 
nor to 

Pope or Steele 
Or Beattie's wark, 

but back to the golden age among the fields of Saturn. 

There remain those great writers who have already been dis- 
cussed at length, Scott and Byron, Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
Keats and Shelley, with perhaps Hogg and Campbell and Moore 
for those who like them. Are these men to remain indefinitely where 
the late nineteenth century placed them, and if so, what part of 
their work will best endure? On Byron the Nemesis which follows 
popularity has laid a heavy hand; his warmest admirers now are 
foreigners; and admiration for him varies inversely as the power 
to understand the language in which he wrote. The beauty cult 
which has been derived from Keats has run into decadent extremes 
and produced a reaction; but that reaction has not yet lowered our 
estimate for the author of "Hyperion" himself. Toward Words- 
worth there is rapt adoration in some quarters and aggressive 
hostility in others, even as there was in his own day. 

The late nineteenth century, after the enthusiasm about Tenny- 
son's "Idylls" had subsided, laid undue emphasis on the short lyric 
as compared with other types of poetry, and winnowed with the 
greatest care the literature which it loved. The verdict of its 
anthologies on what was good or bad in the song poetry of the 
romantic period may be accepted as approximately final. The longer 
poems offer a more troublesome problem. The early nineteenth 
century wrote them hastily in an age which was careless about the 
technique of long poems; the critics of 1900 judged them blindly 
in an age which felt only imperfectly the peculiar charm of long 
poems. Now the twentieth century halts before these inspired but 
inchoate rhapsodies, puzzled and confused, feeling that they con- 
tain much which we would not willingly let die, yet contain it in a 
form which we would not have chosen. "Mazeppa" and "The 
Prelude," "The Revolt of Islam" and "Endymion," Blake's "Vala" 
and Southey's "Thalaba," how gladly would we throw them away 
if we could find all their beauty and suggestion in more condensed 

[ 313 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

form elsewhere; how certain we are that this is not the case! If 
some future writer should give us their inspiration fused and puri- 
fied, made lucid and condensed, would they not automatically drop 
out of literature as the flintlock has dropped out of our arsenals? 
But until that day comes there will be men who will read them for 
something which cannot be found elsewhere. A long poem is like 
a large country. The extent of its territory enables one to ramble 
farther and farther from the frontiers of Philistinism, until he comes 
at last into peaceful midland regions where anxiety is forgotten and 
the language of sordid borderlands is a tongue unknown. For the 
sake of that atmosphere one might forget some faults. 

About Wordsworth there is something which reminds one of 
science. His face in his old age came to look like geological strata. 
His poems, like the rock-ribbed hills, grow picturesque and at- 
tractive only when they have been denuded by torrents of criticism. 
In a deeper way, however, his attitude toward life approximated 
that of the scientist; and this accounts for many of the virtues and 
the faults in his poetry. A great chemist or physicist, in his eager 
search for some new truth, may grow at once inspired and unsocial. 
The life of Wordsworth was a search for abstract truth; but he 
loved that abstract ideal more than he did men. He became at the 
same time an inspired experimenter in the field of vision, and a 
harsh, tactless, antagonizing fellow mortal. He made his life a great 
experiment in the attempt to reconcile poetry and moral phi- 
losophy; he made his poems a record of his laboratory researches; 
and the hardness and bareness of a scientific report is in many of 
them, yet the essence of truth is there too. It was probably this 
quality which attracted John Stuart Mill to his poems, yet made 
Mill believe that they were best adapted for unpoetical minds. 

Keats, on the contrary, is par excellence the poet of art. The 
attitude of the scientist toward truth is to him incomprehensible. 

Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all 
We know on earth, and all we need to know. 

As an artist he had far greater power of improvement than Words- 
worth in technique and form. He grasped a simpler problem, and, 

[ 314 ] 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

had he lived, would have given it far more perfect expression. 
Because he loved men and Grecian urns better than abstract prin- 
ciples, he was a more lovable man and a more poetical poet than 
the sage of Rydal; yet for that very reason he is a less powerful 
figure in the mental history of his country. His poetry was good, 
but his imitators have too often been bad; and he may yet come, 
like Pope, to be unjustly depreciated because of the tradition that 
he founded. None the less we believe that the ages will finally 
pronounce him potentially, though not in actual performance, the 
greatest poet of his day, the one ever improving artist of his time 
who out of errors, follies, and morbidities trodden under foot was 
building a St. Augustine's ladder to the stars. 

Keats, with a keen and critical mind, chose to live in the world 
of emotions. Shelley, with a remarkably poetic temperament and 
an incoherent intellect, vainly attempted to live in the world of 
reason. His philosophy is a fog, his moral code a mirage, dim vapors 
from the Godwinian fen wrapped in sunset glory from the radiance 
of his emotional life. It is as the singer of poetic moods that he 
will endure. His intellect was morbid and half-mad where that of 
Keats was healthy and keen; but his moods were rich and splendid, 
whether wholesome and happy or melancholy and diseased. In no 
other writer of his time is the music of poetic emotion so free from 
jarring discords, even where it says nothing and gets nowhere. 

Byron, if he endures, must endure as the poet of energy, — intel- 
lectual energy in observation, emotional energy in passion. He has 
no other valid claim. Despite occasional magnificent passages, he 
has neither the ear nor the conscience of an artist. He was not a 
noble man, and all attempts to whitewash him are doomed to failure. 
If we are to admire him at all we must admire him as we do the 
volcano and the panther, a mad, destructive force that is inimical 
to peace, beauty, and morality, but that awes through its wild out- 
pouring of power; or in satire we must consider him as an intel- 
lectual conflagration at once destroying and cleansing a plague- 
stricken London. Mazeppa's horse foams through the torrent; the 
thunder rattles among the Alps; Lucifer defies the Almighty; the 
forests of a dying world blaze through the gathering blackness, and 

[ 3^5 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

the mocker of "Don Juan" exclaims in a tone not that of the 
Psalmist, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" One might 
compare Byron to Blake's tiger, and exclaim, half in jest, half in 
bitter earnest. 

Did He who made Charles Lamb make thee? 

Only the experience of modern hunters has shown that the tiger is 
often a bluffing coward; and one wonders if under the fury and 
thunder of Byron there was not as much weakness as power. The 
continent of Europe still believes in him; but the continent until 
recently believed in "Ossian." 

Though the poems of Scott do not reach the highest level, we 
have already recorded our faith in their permanence. Still more are 
we certain that the Waverley novels will endure. Careless construc- 
tion, bungling sentences, sins of inaccuracy against history and 
human nature — all these may be there; but behind them one finds 
so much that is genuinely human or brilliantly picturesque, the 
delight in a good story, the sense of riches infinite. After all, has 
not imagination in our own day been bound down too strictly on the 
Procrustes bed of accuracy, and is it not good to see her in un- 
spoiled vitality on her native heather? 

Aside from the survival of individual poets and poems, how much 
of the romantic generation itself is going to survive, of its thought, 
of its attitude toward life? To our scientific, systematized age much 
of that solitary, introspective dreaming seems remote enough; and 
many of those early theories are considered as exploded. Yet before 
hasty generalizations are made, two facts must be remembered. 
By the law of action and reaction we have rebounded from the early 
nineteenth-century point of view, and tend to hold certain aspects 
of it more visionary than they may seem to our grandchildren. The 
precise combination represented by the "romantic generation" will 
never come back, but many of its elements will recur in new dis- 
guises; and movements, like people, however they may differ from 
their grandparents, will develop unexpected points of sympathy 
with the dead. Even while we are writing, the triumphs of ma- 
chinery and system may be proving that machinery and system 

[ 316 ] 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

have no right to triumph; and in the age of submarines and iron 
order the mysticism of Blake may prove a rock of refuge in a 
weary land. 

Equally important is another consideration that is too often over- 
looked; namely, that many theories of the past have a deep emo- 
tional truth under a thin veil of literal inaccuracy. For instance, 
the romantic generation showed a tendency to deify childhood. 
The schools and psychological laboratories of the twentieth century 
retort that children are little animals; that instead of trailing clouds 
of splendor from God they live to eat and squabble. True enough — 
of the children known to those schools and laboratories. But Words- 
worth, Coleridge, Blake, and Lamb, when they wrote of children, 
were thinking of themselves. Their statements were true as de- 
scriptions of the infant poet, however inaccurately expanded to 
include infant financiers. The history of a poet's life from cradle 
to grave is a history of gradual compromises between a poetic spirit 
and a prosaic world, a gradual lowering of his thought in the locks 
of speech that it may enter the world's mental canals at sea-level. 
If he turns back to the days when there was no leveling because 
no communication, when he looked into other children's faces and 
did not know their minds different from his own — is he not develop- 
ing a very legitimate form of poetic truth? The letters and journals 
of literary men, examined with the most scientific accuracy, do 
indicate a poetical and charming mental world in childhood; and 
what these writers painted was a beautiful truth, only with a wrong 
label stuck in the corner. A similar rightness of emotional feeling, 
however obscured by superficial fallacies, lay underneath the love 
of retirement, of individualism, of subjective thought. Our own age 
has gone to the opposite extreme, and has produced — German 
Kultur. By their fruits ye shall know them. 

The early nineteenth century was, let it be granted, an intoxicated, 
erratic, faulty age. But it was intoxicated with noble thoughts, it 
erred in the pursuit of high ideals, and its faults will not hide from 
posterity the greatness of its virtues. It survived the criticism of its 
own day; it has survived the world-racking changes of more recent 
days; and it will continue to endure. At the present time among 

[317 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

many of our young poets there is a seeming reaction against the 
great writers of that period, but this reaction is a wholesome sign 
for both the living and the dead. It is not at bottom an attempt to 
depreciate bygone masters, but an attempt to check a slavish 
tradition derived from them. They also warred against the Pope 
imitators, but Pope himself they did not kill; and a greater than 
Pope is here. 



[ 318 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 

Titles when mentioned the first time are given in full with dates. When 
repeated later, they are usually abbreviated. 

INTRODUCTION 

The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by H. B. Forman (1880), 

IV, 206. 
Byron's Don Juan, IV, Iv. 

Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. by W. Knight (1907), I, 208. 
The Correspondence of William Cowper, arranged, etc., by T. Wright 

(1904), IV, 77. 

CHAPTER I 

Lamartine, Meditations Poetiques, nouvelle edition, par G. Lanson (191 5), 

I, Ixxxvi. 
A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, by O. Elton (1912), I, 74, 

75, 44, 32, 37. 
Diet, of Nat. Biog.: Charlotte Smith, William Hayley, Anna Seward, 

William Gifford. 
Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, by Charlotte Smith, 9th ed. (1800), 

Sonnet xxii. 
Sonnets and Other Poems, by W. L. Bowles, 8th ed. (1802), Sonnet xx. 
Poems by S. T. Coleridge, 2d ed. (1797), p. 71. 
Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, 

ed. by Thomas Sadler, 2d ed. (1869), I, 381, 58. 
Wright's Correspondence of William Cowper, IV, 78. 
The Emigrants, A Poem, by Charlotte Smith (1793), p. ix. 
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by E. H. Coleridge (1895), I, 221- 
I 222, 96, 403. 

I Poems and Plays by William Hayley (1785), III, 76. 
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, ed. by John 

Johnson (1823), I, 207. 

[ 319 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, by A. G. L'Estrange (1870), I, 154. 
Louisa, a Poetical Romance, by Miss Seward, 5th ed., New Haven (1789), 

Preface and p. 13. 
The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, ten vols. (1838), I, xxx. 
Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, ed. by E. V. Lucas (1898), p. 183. 
The Poetical Works of Erasmus Darwin (1806), II, 15; III, 21. 
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by J. G. Lockhart (Riverside 

Pressed.), I, 235, 274. 
The Rolliad (1795), pp. 79, i. 

A History of English Poetry, by W. J. Courthope (1910), VI, 127-132. 
De Quincey's Works, author's ed. (1863), XIII, 52. 
The Shade of Alexander Pope, etc., 3d ed. (1799), pp. 36, 51. 
The Farmer's Boy, by Robert Bloomfield, 15th ed. (1827), pp. xxx, 33. 
The Early Life of Samuel Rogers, by P. W. Clayden (1888), pp. 189, 

209, 97. 
Rogers and His Contemporaries, by P. W. Clayden (1889), I, 122, 49. 
Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, ed. by W. Beattie (1850), I, 225, 

93, 165, 188, 222. 
Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, 3d ed. (1856), pp. 

255, 41.^ 
Life and Writings of Mrs. Radcliffe, prefixed to her Gaston de Blonde- 

ville, p. 12. 
A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, by H. A. 

Beers (1898), pp. 254, 409, 413. 
Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. by the 

Right Hon. Lord John Russell (1857), I, 26, 50. 
Byron's Childe Harold, IV, xviii. 

Bryan Waller Procter, etc., by C. P. [Coventry Patmore] (1877), p. 31. 
Leigh Hunt, by C. Kent (1889), P- 202. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, I, 509. 
Leigh Hunt's Blue-Stocking Revels. 
Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian (ed. of 1797), I, 165; II, 152. 
Kotzebue in England, by Walter Sellier, University of Leipsic dissertation 

(1901), especially pp. 5-7. 
Preface to ed. of Schiller's Robbers, etc., in Bohn's Standard Library 

(1881). (Partly verified from more original sources.) 
The Life and Correspondence of the Late Robert Southey, ed. by C. C. 

Southey (1849), I> 287. 

[ 320 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 

The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. by A. R. Waller and A. 

Glover (1902), V, 362. 
William Wordsworth, by G. M. Harper (1916), I, 263. 
Walter Scott's Advertisement to his House of Aspen (pub. 1829). 

CHAPTER II 

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, II, 46; I, 210; I, 224; I, 216; 

I, 211; I, 217; I, 259-260; III, 41; VI, 193; I, 178, 180; I, 319; 

I, 287; I, 338; I, 32s; III, 136; II, 134; I, 248; II, 16; III, 138. 
Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, by 

Joseph Cottle (1847 Am. ed.), pp. 8, 134, 13, 14. 
Lucas's Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, pp. 35, 41. 
Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb (1798), pp. 5, 75, 12, 

48, 61, 84. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, I, 106; I, 125; I, 115; I, 68; 

I, 28; I, 79; III, 121. 
William Hazlitt, by A. Birrell (1902), pp. 47, 51. 

Thomas Poole and His Friends, by Mrs. Henry Sandford (1888), I, 272. 
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I, 115, 313, 425, 164, 155, 314. 
Clayden's Rogers and His Contemporaries, I, 193. 
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. by E. V. Lucas (1905), VI, 

13, 128, 129, 134, 56, 60, 89, 15; V, 27, 28. 
Southey 's Annual Anthology, II. 
Coleridge's Poem, To the Author of Poems Published Anonymously at 

Bristol. 
The Critical Review, Oct. 1798. 

Thomas Hutchinson's reprint of the Lyrical Ballads (1898), pp. 8, 9. 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School, by Alois 

Brandl (Lady Eastlake's translation 1887), p. 155. 
Beers's History of English Romanticism, i8th Cent., pp. 397, 398. 
Clayden's Early Life of Rogers, pp. 147, 243. 
Seccombe's Age of Johnson, p. 42. 
Crabb Robinson's Diary, I, 154. 
Joseph Cottle's Malvern Hills (4th ed., 1829), p. vii. 
Harper's William Wordsworth, II, 429, 311; I, 347. 
Preface to 1838 ed. of Southey 's poems. 
Southey's poem, Jaspar. 

Literary Rambles in the West of England, by A. L. Salmon (1906), p. 261. 
Coleridge's poem. Recollections of Love. 

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ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

CHAPTER III 

Much of the material here given is from Lockhart's Life of Scott, editions 

of which are thoroughly indexed. Other sources are as follows: 
The Poetical Remains of the Late Dr. John Leyden (1819), pp. 361, 49, 

XXV, 346, xxxiii, 317, 365, 352. 
The Mountain Bard, by James Hogg (1807), pp. xxviii, 7, 134. 
Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, by Mrs. Garden (2d ed. 

1887), p. vi. 
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (5th ed. 1812), I, 15; II, 32; 

II, 239; II, 309; I, cxxi; I, cxxxii; II, 33; II, 188; II, 361; 

I, cxxvii; I, cxviii; I, cxxvi; I, cxxvii; I, 124; I, 96. 
Popular Ballads and Songs, etc., by Robert Jamieson (1806), p. vii. 
Specimens of early English Metrical Romances, by George Ellis (ed. of 

1848), Preface. 
Article on Karajich in Encyclopedia Britannica. 
Scott's Introduction to Canto III of Marmion. 
-Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain, by S. B. Hustvedt, 

p. 269. 
L'Estrange's Life of Mary Mitford, I, 217. 
The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border, by John Veitch (1878), 

pp. 246, 258, 37, 3. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 210. 
Jane Porter's Retrospective Introduction (1831) to Scottish Chiefs. 
William Blackwood and His Sons, by Mrs. Oliphant (1897), I, 452. 
Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, III, 157. 
The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, by P. M. Irving (1862), I, 378. 
Bums's poem. To the Guidwife of Wauchope House. 

CHAPTER IV 

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, II, 227; II, 352; IV, 91; 

II, 136; III, 153; II, 25; II, 242; III, no; IV, in; II, 109; III, 
285; II, 255; IV, 16; II, 360; VI, 18; II, 271; II, 199; I, 278; 
II, 2; I, 197; IV, 100; IV, 227; II, 198; IV, 105. 

Chronicle of the Cid, by Robert Southey (Am. ed. 1846), p. 330. 

Beattie's Life of Campbell, I, 495. 

Crabb Robinson's Diary, I, 55. 

Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 29; I, 457; I, 496; I, 174; 

[ 322 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 

II, si; I, 485; I, 486; II, 437; II, 2; II, 36; II, 124; II, 125; 
II, 162; II, 128; I, 204; I, 138. 

Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets, by Thomas De Quincey, Every- 
man Library ed., pp. 24, 54, 104. 

Coleridge's poem, A Stranger Minstrel. 

Wordsworth's poems: Poems on the Naming of Places, III; "When to the 
attractions of the busy world"; and "Composed by the side of 
Grasmere Lake." 

Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I, 388. 

Lucas's Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, pp. 239, 249, 241. 

Desultory Thoughts in London, by Charles Lloyd (1821), pp. i, 89, 129, 
138, 141. 

Poems, by John Wilson (ed. of 1825), I, 183, 

Bryan Waller Procter, etc., by C. P., p. 142. 

Harper's William Wordsworth, II, 165, 230, 197, 206, 375. 

Wordsworth's Excursion, Book II. 

Cambridge ed. of Wordsworth's poems, pp. 434, 361, 346. 

The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (ed. of 1870), p. 228. 

Lucas's Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, I, 162. 

CHAPTER V 

Sources other than Lockhart's Life of Scott are as follows: 

The Spirit of Discovery, by William Bowles (1804), p. xi. 

Clayden's Rogers and His Contemporaries, I, 126. 

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, III, 173, 126. 

Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, I, 355; II, 20; I, 365. 

Scott's Introduction to Canto VI of Marmion. 

Heine's Romantische Schule, section on Uhland. 

Main currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, by Georg Brandes, 

II, xvi. 
L'Estrange's Life of Mary Mitford, I, 106, 231, 91, 132, 107. 
Wordsworth and His Circle, by D. W. Rannie (1907), p. 318. 
The Works of Lord Byron, ed. R. E. Prothero (1898 ff.), Letters and 

Journals, I, 343; III, 239; IV, 228. 
Harper's William Wordsworth, II, 205. 
Beattie's Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, I, 523. 
Poets and Poetry of Scotland, ed. by J. G. Wilson (1876), I, 404. 
Cambridge ed. of Scott's poems, pp. 230, 229. 

[ 323 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Constance de Castile, by William Sotheby (1812), p. 126. 
Poems, by Miss Holford (1811), p. 43. 
Memorials of James Hogg, by Mrs. Garden, p. x. 

The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd, ed. by T. Thomson (1873), II, 43, 
55, 15, 56, 34- 

CHAPTER VI 

Memoirs, etc., of Thomas Moore, Lord John Russell, II, 660; I, 276; 

II, 552; I, 96; I, 98; II, 611; I, 136; I, 114; I, 23; I, 344; I, 423; 

I, 420. 
Byron's Works, Letters and Journals, V, 42; II, 128; III, 227; III, 119; 

V, 363; V, 235; VI, 333; I, 249; II, 255. 
Holland House, by Marie Liechtenstein (1874), I, 138, 24, 122. 
Clayden's Rogers and His Contemporaries, I, 22, 35, 298, 305. 
John Hookham Frere and His Friends, by Gabrielle Festing (1899), 

p. 186. 
Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, IV, 44. 
Rogers's Poetical Works, Aldine ed.. Memoir by E. Bell. 
Bryan Waller Procter, etc., p. 148. 
Poems, by W. R. Spencer (1835), pp. 53, 51, 131. 
Beattie's Life of Campbell, I, 546, 26, 32, 46, 121, 70, 123, 38, 93, 165, 

188, 128, 191, 220, 326, 367. 
Birrell's William Hazlitt, p. 138. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, I, 303. 
L'Estrange's Life of Mary Mitford, I, 283. 
The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, p. 163. 
Foliage, by Leigh Hunt (181 8), p. 14. 
Advice to Julia, by Henry Luttrell (1820), pp. 39-41- 
Henry Hart Milman, by A. Milman (1900), p. 127. 
Byron's Corsair II, xv; Lara II, x. 

Campbell's Lines Written at the Request of the Highland Society. 
O. Elton's Survey, II, 145. 
Richter's Quintus Fixlein, Letter-box I. 

Brandes's Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, V, xxviii. 
Byron's Don Juan, X, xvii-xix. 

Thomas Moore, by Stephen Gwynn (1905), pp. 74, 77, 95. 
P. Irving's Life of Washington Irving, II, 37, 209. 

[ 324 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 
CHAPTER VII 

Sources other than Lockhart's Life of Scott are as follows: 

O. Elton's Survey, I, 363, 367, 408. 

Guy Mannering, Chap. I. 

Heart of Midlothian, Chap. XXX. 

Bride of Lammermoor, Chap. XXX. 

William Blackwood and His Sons, Mrs. Oliphant, I, 4; I, 241 ; I, 26; I, 33; 

I, 274; I, 279; I, 397; I, 285; I, 159; I, 150; I, 331; I, 216; I, 114; 

I, 363; I, 423; I, 271; II, 25; II, 26; I, 43; I, 42; II, 18. 
Tales from Blackwood, The Fatal Repast. 
R. L. Stevenson's Talk and Talkers. 

The Development of the English Novel, by W. L. Cross (1899), p. 170. 
De Quincey's Works (author's ed. of 1863), XIII, 42. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Byron's Works, Letters and Journals, V, 337. 

C. Kent's Leigh Hunt, p. xii. 

Life of Leigh Hunt, by Cosmo Monkhouse (1893), PP- 124, 85, 116, 196. 
I Recollections of Writers, by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, New York, 
Scribner's ed., pp. 18, 16, 155, 26, 48, 49, 19, 135, 134, 28, 126, 
I 124, 152. 

I Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed., etc., by Tom Taylor, 2d ed. (1853), 
j ^ I, 122, 170, 192, 219, 362, 93, 95, 99, 335, 296, 200. 
(Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, pp. 192, 220, 161, 243, 275, 219, 230. 
The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn, by William Sharp (1892), pp. 
17, 28, 116, 23, 32, 126, 59, 29, 166, 211, 103. 

Bryan Waller Procter, etc., pp. 195, 136, 201, 200, 195. 
I A. Birrell's William Hazlitt, pp. 188, 11 1. 

Leigh Hunt's Fohage, pp. cxv, 18, 20. 

I The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, ed. by His Eldest Son (1862), I, 134, 

I 136,2,78,127,158,80. 

lO. Elton's Survey, II, 293, 242, 243. 

iLife, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, ed. by R. M. Milnes 

(one vol. ed. 1848), p. 94. 
jKeats's Endymion, I, 134; Sleep and Poetry. 

^Marcian Colonna and Other Poems, by Barry Cornwall (1820), p. 169. 
I Works of William Hazlitt, Waller and Glover, VI, 16; I, 4; I, 79. 
Joseph and His Brethren, by Charles Wells (1876), p. ix. 

[ 32s ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Lamb's essay, Witches and Other Night Fears. 

The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Edward Dowden (1886), I, 221. 

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, III, 325. 

Forman's Shelley's Prose Works, IV, 79, 144. 

Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 63. 

Poetry and Prose by John Keats, ed. by H. B. Forman (1890), pp. 

106, 109. 
Leigh Hunt's Relations With Byron, Shelley, and Keats, by Barnette 

Miller (i9io),pp. 128-130. 
Keats, by Sidney Colvin (1887), p. 113. 

CHAPTER IX 

Lucas's Lamb's Works, VI, 33; VI, 229; VI, 382; VI, 404; VII, 797; 

VII, 782; VII, 613; VII, 618; VII, 669; VII, 684; VII, 690. 
Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, II, 287. 
Lamb's essay. Old China. 
Beattie's Life of Campbell, I, 380. 
Bryan Waller Procter, etc., pp. 125, 172, 45, 56. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by James Dykes Campbell (1894), pp. 184, 185. 
The Literary Gazette, May 22d 1819. 
The Examiner, May 23d 18 19. 
Blackwood's Magazine, June 18 19. 
Procter's poem. To John Forster. 
Clarke's Recollections of Writers, pp. 146, 14-15. 
Wells's Joseph and His Brethren (ed. of 1876), p. 190. 
Poems of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Muses' Library ed., p. x. 
Diet, of Nat. Biog., George Darley. 
Works of Hazlitt, I, 24; VI, 192; IX, 152. 
Byron's Don Juan, IX, xiv. 
Rannie's Wordsworth and His Circle, p. 221. 
C. Monkhouse's Life of Leigh Hunt, p. 59. 
Sharp's Life of Severn, p. 74. 

Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, by T. N. Talfourd (1848), II, 2-3, 7. 
Memoir of Henry Francis Cary, by H. Cary (1847), II, 94-95- 
Thomas Hood, by Walter Jerrold (1909), pp. 102, 95, 93-94, 278, 257. 
Poems by Hartley Coleridge (ed. of 1853), p. xcii. 
De Quincey and His Friends, by James Hogg (1895), p. 53. 
The Life of John Clare, by F. Martin (1865), pp. 81, 86. 

[ 326 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 

The London Magazine, II, 194; VI, 7; VII, 180; VII, 96. 

Blackwood's Magazine, XIII, 86. 

Lamb's essays: The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple; Oxford in the 

Vacation. 
Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chap. L. 
Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, IV, 350. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, III, 28. 
The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, by Arthur Symons (1909), 

p. 289. 

CHAPTER X 

G. Festing's John Hookham Frere, pp. 188, 18, 186. 

The Works of John Hookham Frere, ed. by W. E. Frere, 2d ed. (1874), 

II, 222; I, 164; II, 229; II, 242. 
Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, V, 21. 
Desultory Thoughts in London, by Charles Lloyd. 
Lloyd's preface to Beritola. 

Marcian Colonna, by Barry Cornwall (1820), p. 3. 
Hunt's Foliage, Ixxiii-lxxiv. 
Works of Hazlitt, IX, 234, 90, 229. 
Diet, of Nat. Biog., Turner. 
Paris in 181 5, by George Croly. 
O. Elton's Survey, II, 258. 
Letters of S. T. Coleridge, II, 458. 
Southey 's Life and Correspondence, III, 268. 
A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century, by H. A. 

Beers (1901), pp. 98, 102, 109. 
Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 216. 
Byron's Works, Letters and Journals, V, 193; V, 194; IV, 315; V, 217; 

V, 243. 
Lord Byron, by Karl Elze (1872 translation), p. 249. 
The Modern Language Review, IX, 440 ff . 
Dowden's Life of Shelley, II, 193, 381, 245, 264. 
Byron's Childe Harold, IV, xxxv, xlii. 
Byron's Island, II, vi-vii. 
Forman's Prose Works of Shelley, IV, 239. 
Shelley's Advertisement to his Rosalind and Helen. 
Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, I, 243. 
Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, p. 324. 

[ 327 ] 



ENGLISH ROMANTIC GENERATION 

Barnette Miller's Leigh Hunt, pp. 112, 115. 

Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, by Leigh Hunt, p. 52, 

Preface to 1844 ed. of Himt's poems. 

Walter Savage Landor, by John Forster (1869), pp. 260, 329, 280, 356, 

261, 273, 322, 394. 
Landor, by Sidney Colvin (1881), pp. 134, 83, no, 135, 128. 
Ausbreitung und Verfall der Romantik, by Ricarda Huch (1902), pp. 

33-36. 

CHAPTER XI 

Bryan Waller Procter, etc., p. 135. 

Blackwood's Magazine, Apr. 1822, 456; Aug. 1817, 516; Dec. 1822, 769; 
Mar. 1823, 347; July 1822, 61, 71. 

The London Magazine, July 1820, 45. 

Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, IV, 305; VI, 21; VI, 161; 
VI, 39; V, 339. 

Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 145; III, 122; II, 359. 

Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chaps. LXIV, LXV, LIV, LIX. 

Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, I, 240. 

Lucas's Lamb's Works, VI, 365; VII, 645; VII, 814; VII, 617; VII, 748. 

William Blackwood and His Sons, I, 324. 

Henry Hart Milman, by A. Milman, pp. 57, 123. 

Symons's Romantic Movement, p. 266. 

L'Estrange's Life of Mary Mitford, II, 147, 28, 84, 141, 259, 244. 

P. Irving's Life of Washington Irving, I, 362; II, 166. 

Sharp's Life of Severn, p. 137. 

Milman 's Introductory Observations to his Belshazzar (1839 ed.). 

De Quincey's Letters to a Young Man, III. 

Byron's Don Juan, XI, liv; V, lii. 

Mrs. Hemans's poems: The Coronation of Inez de Castro, The Abencer- 
rage. The Last Constantine, The Indian City, Ancient Greek Song 
of Exile, Edith, The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, A 
Tale of the Secret Tribunal, The Wild Huntsman, The Forest 
Sanctuary, A Tale of the Fourteenth Century. 

Diet, of Nat. Biog., Letitia Landon, Mary R. Mitford. 

Letitia Landon's Troubadour, II, IV. 

Mrs. Browning's poem, L. E. L.'s Last Question. 

C. Kent's Leigh Hunt, p. 126. 

Beddoes's Poetical Works (ed. of 1890), p. xvii. 

[ 328 ] 



SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES 

Beers's History of English Romanticism, 19th Cent., p. 73. 

Clayden's Rogers and His Contemporaries, II, 80, 36, 4. 

Martin's Life of John Clare, pp. 86, 204, 192, 202, 252. 

Hunt's Autobiography, pp. 155, 230. 

Hunt's Foliage (1818), pp. 11, 12, 9. 

Houghton's Life, etc., of Keats, pp. 139-140. 

Byron's Works, Letters and Journals, IV, 303; V, 281; IV, 169; IV, 225; 

V, 104; VI, 4; V, 132. 
Works of HazHtt, VI, 336. 

Russell's Memoirs, etc., of Thomas Moore, I, 202; I, 248; I, 251. 
Life of Haydon, II, 119. 
O. Elton's Survey, I, 390. 
Carlyle's Signs of the Times (II, 337 of Carlyle's Works, 1869 ed.). 

CHAPTERS XIII AND XIV 

Thomas Warton's Ode on the Approach of Summer. 

Essays in a Series of Letters, by John Foster (1833 ed.), pp. 131, 132. 
(First called to my attention by Dr. Paul Kaufman.) 

Hazlitt's Works, X, 81; VI, 43; IV, 200. 

Byron's Works, Letters and Journals, II, 314. 

Lucas's Lamb's Works, VII, 831. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. 

O. Elton's Survey, II, 234. 

Symons's Romantic Movement, pp. 9, 10. 

Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chap. LXXII. 

William Blake, Poet and Mystic, by P. Berger (D. H. Cormer's trans- 
lation), pp. lO-II. 

Die BlUtezeit der Roman tik, by Ricarda Huch, p. 341. 

Jane Austen and Her Times, by G. E. Mitton, 2d ed. (1906), p. 163. 

Jane Austen and Her Country-House Comedy, by W. H, Helm (1909), 
pp. 86, 65. 



[ 329 ] 



INDEX 



"Abbot," Scott's, 154. 

"Abou Ben Adhem," Hunt's, 174. 

Addison, Joseph, 96, 12 8, 129, 132, 
148, 172, 256, 276. 

Aeschylus, 181, 246, 304. 

"Affliction of Margaret," Words- 
worth's, 108-109. 

"Alastor," Shelley's, 180, 183. 

Albums, 262. 

"Album Verses," Lamb's, 262. 

Alcman, 179. 

Alfieri, V., 98, 227, 234. 

Allston, Washington, 244, 

"Amadis of Gaul," Southey's, 93, 
112, 

"Ancient Mariner," Coleridge's, 51, 
54-55, 60, 64, 66. 

"Ancient Spanish Ballads," Lock- 
hart's, 93, 161. 

"Anne of Geierstein," Scott's, 154, 

155- 
Anti-Jacobin, 267. 
"Antiquary," Scott's, 153, 154. 
Ariosto, L., 114, 215, 218, 233, 234. 
Amim, L. A., von, 76. 
Austen, Jane, 114, 117, 161, 268, 

272, 274, 309-310, 311- 
Aytoun, W. E., 162. 

Baillie, Joanna, 62, 83, 86-87, 122, 

127, 134, 143. 
"Ballads and Metrical Tales," 

Southey's, 56. 



Ballant5nie, James, 71, 151, 152. 
Balzac, H. de, 157. 
"Barry Cornwall." See Procter. 
Barton, Bernard, 201, 203, 208, 

209, 253, 291. 
Beattie, James, 14, 15, 29, 32, 115. 
Beau Brummel, 130. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 186, 187, 

191, 192, 196, 197. 
Beddoes, Thomas L., 192, 193-195, 

197, 254. 
Beers, H. A., 55, 255, 287, 297. 
Behn, Aphra, 242. 
"Beppo," Byron's, 214, 215, 216. 
Berni, F., 214, 215, 233. 
"Betrothed," Scott's, 154, 155. 
"Biographia Literaria," Coleridge's, 

156, 288. 
"Black Dwarf," Scott's, 153. 
Blackwood's Magazine, 12, 102, 

152, 155-159, 160, 161, 163, 172, 

184, 191, 199, 206, 239, 240, 243, 

244, 254, 255, 281. 
Blackwood, William, 158, 161, 162. 
Blair, Robert, 14. 
Blake, William, 14, 21, 22, 55, 66, 

68, 83, 104, 116, 117, 120, 138, 

148, 206, 207, 288, 290, 293, 302, 

303, 306-309, 310, 312. 
Blanchard, Laman, 252. 
Bloomfield, Robert, 26-27, 29, 112, 

203, 307- 
Boaden, James, 38. 



[ 331 ] 



INDEX 



Boccaccio, G., 216, 217, 221, 234. 

Boehme, Jacob, 55, 118, 307. 

Boileau, N., 129, 135, 140, 257. 

Booth, J. B., 198. 

"Borderers," Wordsworth's, 54, 60. 

Borrow, George, 246. 

Bowles, William Lisle, 20, 21, 48, 

49, 63, 102, 112, 130, 134, 254, 

255, 256, 258, 260, 269. 
Bowring, Sir John, 161. 
Brandes, Georg, 115. 
Brentano, C, 157, 307. 
"Bridal of Triermain," Scott's, 122, 

283, 289. 
"Bride of Abydos," Byron's, 145, 

177. 
"Bride of Lammermoor," Scott's, 

153- 

"Brothers," Wordsworth's, 65, 107. 

Brown, C. A., 165, 167, 192. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 189. 

Browne, William, 189, 192. 

Browning, Mrs. E. B., 252. 

Browning, Robert, 225. 

Brunetiere, F., 298. 

Brydges, Sir Egerton, 189. 

Bulwer-Lytton, E. R., 221, 263. 

Burger, G. A., 37, 55, 64, 69, 139. 

Bums, Robert, 14, 21, 49, 51, 56, 
66, 68, 72, 88, 89, 108, 122, 141, 
14s, 154, 197, 200, 203, 210, 265, 
266, 309, 312-313. 

Burton, R., 189. 

Byron, George Gordon, 11, 13, 34, 
68, 92, 93, 102, 113, 116, 117, 
118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 130, 131, 
132, 133, 134, 137, 138, 139, 140, 
143-147, 155, 157, 163, 165, 172, 
173, 17s, 176, 177, 182, 184, 188, 

[ 33 



191, 197, 198, 207, 213, 214, 215, 

216, 217, 218, 219, 223, 224, 225- 
228, 232, 233, 234, 235, 239, 240, 
242, 243, 245, 246, 248, 251, 254, 
255, 256,257,258,259,260, 261, 
262, 269, 270, 275, 276-280, 
281,291, 292,293,301,303,313, 
315,316. 

"Cadyow Castle," Scott's, 79, 290. 

"Cain," Byron's, 223, 241, 243. 

Callanan, J. J., 306. 

Calvert, Raisley, 66. 

Campbell, J. Dykes, 188. 

Campbell, Thomas, 24, 27, 28, 30- 
32, 48, 68, 80, 87, 93, 112, 114, 
127, 130, 131, 133, 134, 13s, 138, 
140, 141-143, 147, 168, 173, 184, 
187, 239, 246, 254, 255, 256, 258, 
259, 261, 282, 311. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 74, 83, 100, 144, 
164, 200, 223, 247, 261, 263, 293. 

Cary, H. F., 199, 200, 205, 222, 

223, 307- 
"Castle Dangerous," Scott's, 155. 
"Cenci," Shelley's, 192, 221, 228- 

229. 
Chateaubriand, Vicomte de, 33, 

157, 207, 244, 249, 251. 
Chatterton, Thomas, 14, 15, 21, 33, 

43, 45, 62, 66, 115, 267, 307. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 172, 173, 212, 

217, 221. 
Chesterfield, Lord, 57. 

"Childe Harold," Byron's, 93, 121, 
122, 130, 145, 146, 173, 176, 219, 
223, 225, 226, 227, 232, 249, 271. 

"Christabel," Coleridge's, 11, 51, 

2 ] 



INDEX 



62, 64, 65, 66, 74, 82, 84, 91, 97, 

134, 271, 292, 296. 
"Christopher North." See Wilson, 

John. 
"Chronicle of the Cid," Southey's, 

93- 
Churchill, Charles, 14. 
"City of the Plague," John Wilson's, 

lOO-IOI. 

Clare, John, 200, 201, 202, 203, 

204, 209, 261, 262, 305. 
Clarke, Chas. Cowden, 164, 165, 

166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 182, 196, 
197, 198. 

"Cloud," Shelley's, 230. 

Coleridge, Hartley, 98, 201, 203, 
204, 209, 210. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 11, 15, 
20, 22, 34, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 
47, 48, 49, 50, SI, 54, 55, 56, 
57, 58, 59, 62, 63-66, 68, 70, 78, 
90, 91, 95-98, loi, 116, 117, 120, 
131, 134, 143, 146, 151, 152, 163, 

167, 169, 186, i8Sf 189, 191, 198, 
208, 212, 213, 222, 223, 240, 255, 
268, 269, 270, 272, 275, 288, 291, 
292, 293, 300, 302, 307. 

Collins, William, 14, 267. 
Colman, George, 269. 
Colvin, Sidney, 237. 
Combe, William, 269. 
"Confessions of an English Opium- 

Eater," De Quincey's, 200, 202, 

205-206, 253. 
Constable, A., 113, 151, 155. 
"Corsair," Byron's, 138, 143, 146, 

173, 182, 239. 
Cottle, Amos, 45, 48. 
Cottle, Joseph, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 



52, 58-59, 62, 66, 165, 175, 243, 

269. 
"Count Julian," Landor's, 93. 
"Count Robert of Paris," Scott's, 

154, 155- 
Courthope, W. J., 25, 298. 
Cowper, William, 14, 20, 21, 22, 48, 

49, 51, 53, 66, 68, 89, 98, 108, 

210, 266. 
Crabbe, George, 27, 32, 43, 48, 68, 

114, 121, 122, 138, 148, 156, 172, 

210, 231, 258, 260, 270, 287, 303, 

310-312,311, 312. 
Croker, Thomas Crofton, 241, 306. 
Croly, George, 221, 243, 246, 261, 

281. 
Cross, W. L., 160. 
Cunningham, Allan, 83, 85, 200, 

201, 203, 204, 209, 210, 261. 
"Curse of Kehama," Southey's, 91, 

109, 117, 222. 

Dale, Thomas, 243. 

Daniel, S., 189. 

Dante Alighieri, iii, 199, 221- 

225, 233, 234, 296, 298, 304. 
D'Arblay, Madame, 29. 
Darley, George, 193, 195, 196, 197, 

200, 203, 205, 254. 
Darwin, Erasmus, 23-24, 57, 63, 

267. 
Davy, Sir Humphry, 62. 
Day, Thomas, 23. 
De Musset, A., 224. 
De Quincey, Thomas, 25, 90, 96, 

99-100, loi, 102, 109, 159, 161, 

200, 201, 202, 205-206, 211, 

246, 247. 
Dekker, Thomas, 196, 197. 



[ 333 ] 



INDEX 



Delia Cruscans, 26. 

Denham, J., 132. 

Dermody, Thomas, 306. 

De Stael, Madame, 133, 144, 289, 

291, 293. 
"Desultory Thoughts in London," 

Lloyd's, 99, 216. 
Disraeli, Isaac, 255. 
"Divine Comedy." See Dante. 
Dobson, Austin, 296. 
"Don Juan," Byron's, 146, 156, 214, 

215, 216, 233, 245, 247, 276- 

280. 
"Dramatic Scenes," Procter's, 190- 

192, 217. 
Drayton, M., 192. 
Dryden, John, 116, 128, 135, 172, 

174, 256, 259. 
Dyce, Alexander, 196, 197, 242. 
Dyer, George, 62, 305. 
Dyer, John, 13, 15, 198. 

"Earthly Paradise," Wm. Morris's, 

182. 
Edgeworth, Maria, 193, 311. 
Edinburgh Review, 29, 102, 155, 

177, 189, 222, 261, 290. 
Eichendorff, Joseph von, 237, 238. 
Elgin Marbles, 169, 175, 176, 177, 

178, 182. 

Elliott, Ebenezer, 113, 122. 
Ellis, George, 74, 75. 
Elton, O., 158, 182, 294. 
"Endymion," Keats 's, 171, 173, 

174, 179, 192, 313- 

"English Bards and Scotch Review- 
ers," Byron's, 117, 137, 173, 268. 

"English Eclogues," Southey's, 51, 
55- 



"Epipsychidion," Shelley's, 231. 
"Epistle to a Friend," Rogers's, 135. 
"Essays of Elia," Lamb's, 205, 

207-208. 
"Ettrick Shepherd." See Hogg, 

James. 
"Eve of St. Agnes," Keats's, 74, 

292, 294. 
"Eve of St. John," Scott's, 79. 
Examiner, Hunt's, 165, 166, 170, 

176, 191, 199, 256, 307. 
"Excursion," Wordsworth's, 52, 65, 

98, 102, 106, 109, 110, 118, 143, 

277, 296, 297. 

Falconer, William, 13. 

"Family Legend," Baillie's, 122. 

"Fall of Robespierre," Coleridge's, 

etc., 44. 
Fawcett, 40. 

Ferrier, Susan E., 151, 153, 161. 
Filicaja, V. da, 226, 251. 
Ford, John, 187, 190, 192. 
Forman, H. B., 196. 
Foscolo, Ugo, 222. 
Foster, John, 288. 
Fouque, F. H. K., 115, 147. 
Fox, Charles James, 129, 132. 
Frere, John Hookham, 161, 213- 

215, 216, 217, 272, 283. 
Friend, Coleridge's, 96. 
"Frost at Midnight," Coleridge's, 

51- 
Fuseli, J. H., 175. 

Gait, John, 86, 151, 160. 
Gautier, T., 146, 157, 193. 
"Gertrude of Wyoming," Camp- 
bell's, 121. 



[ 334 ] 



INDEX 



"Giaour," Byron's, ii, 145, 177. 
Gifford, William, 26, 138, 187, 255, 

266, 281. 
Gilchrist, Octavius, 255. 
Gillies, R. P., 102, 158. 
Gilpin, William, 21, 89, 269. 
Gleig, George, 160. 
Godwin, William, 180, 187, 268. 
Goethe, J. W. von, 37, 38, no, 177, 

237, 238, 279. 
"Goetz von Berlichingen," Goethe's, 

38, 39, 41, 69, 71, 92. 
Goldoni, Carlo, 221. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 14, 31, 79, 129, 

142, 256. 
Grahame, James, 122, 127, 269. 
Gray, Thomas, 14, 31, 33, 48, 49, 

89, 92, 142, 212, 250, 266, 267, 

295, 307- 
"Grave of King Arthur," Warton's, 

82. 
Greene, Robert, 189, 196. 
Greville, F., 189. 
Grimm Brothers, 306. 
Guiccioli, Countess T., 223. 
"Guy Mannering," Scott's, 152. 

Halliwell, J. O., 75. 

Hamilton, Thomas, 161. 

"Harold the Dauntless," Scott's, 

122, 151. 
"Hart-Leap Well," Wordsworth's, 

108. 
Harper, G. M., 62, 65, no, in. 
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 165, 

167, 169, 171, 17s, 176, 178, 182, 

183, 184, 198, 245. 
Hayley, William, 21, 22, 24, 26, 

116, 222, 269, 307. 



Hazlitt, William, 38, 46, 65, loi, 
133, 156, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 
171, 176, 177, 182, 184, 186, 188, 
189, 192, 196, 197, 200, 202, 208, 
211, 219, 234, 290, 291, 292, 293. 

"Heart of Midlothian," Scott's, 153, 

154- 
Heber, Richard, 71, 80. 
Heber, Reginald, 243, 244, 253. 
"Hebrew Melodies," Byron's, 242. 
Heine, Heinrich, 115, 290, 293. 
"Hellas," Shelley's, 181. 
Hemans, Felicia, 62, 93, 162, 182, 

220, 239, 244, 247-251, 253, 

260, 307. 
Herder, J. F. von, 57, 250. 
Heywood, Thomas, 187. 
"History of Matthew Wald," Lock- 
hart's, 160. 
"History of Portugal," Southey's, 

91, 92. 
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 157. 
Hogg, James, 72-73, 74, 78, 124- 

126, 127, 133, 139, 146, 151, 

158, 159 (prose), 200, 243, 252, 

271, 275. 
Holcroft, Thomas, 49. 
Holford, Margaret, 123, 124. 
Holland, Lord, 129, 130, 131, 132, 

148, 214. 
Home, John, 14, 15, 115. 
Homer, 257, 279. 
Hood, Thomas, 196, 197, 200, 202, 

204, 207, 210, 211, 216, 261, 281, 

282, 283. 
Hope, Thomas, 246. 
Horace, 31, 135, 256, 258. 
"Horace in London," James and 

Horace Smith's, 271. 



[ 335 ] 



INDEX 



"Horn of Egremont Castle," Words- 
worth's, 119, 
Huch, Ricarda, 236. 
Hugo, Victor, 11, 157, 164, 235, 

293- 

"Human Life," Rogers's, 135. 

Hunt, J. H. Leigh, 34, 109, 135, 
136, 156, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 
168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 
177, 178, 182, 183, 184, 186, 191, 
198, 199,217, 223,232,233,234, 
23s, 240,253, 256,257, 291,292, 

307- 

Hurd, Richard, 29. 

"Hymn Before Sunrise," Cole- 
ridge's, 91, 97. 

"H5niin to Intellectual Beauty," 
Shelley's, 183. 

"Hyperion," Keats's, 180, 183, 287, 
296. 

"Imaginary Conversations," Lan- 

dor's, 203, 234, 235. 
"Inscriptions," Southey's, 52. 
"Irish Melodies," Moore's, 84, 121, 

139, 140-141. 
Irving, Washington, 87, 147-148, 

244, 247. 
"Isabella," Keats's, 171, 216, 217. 
"Island," Byron's, 226. 
"Isle of Palms," Wilson's, 100. 
"Italian," Mrs. Radcliffe's, 35, 36, 

153, 253. 
"Italy," Rogers's, 218, 220, 221, 

262. 
"Ivanhoe," Scott's, 154. 

Jamieson, Robert, 74, 75, 84. 
"Jane Eyre," C. Bronte's, 35. 
Japp, A. H., 202. 



"Jaspar," Southey's, 64. 

Jeffrey, Francis, 118, 191, 260, 281. 

"Joan of Arc," Southey's, 60, 61, 

91. 
John Bull, 241. 
"John Woodvil," Lamb's, 47, 60, 

187. 
Johnson, Samuel, 14, 48, 57, 129, 

185, 259. 
Jonson, Ben, 187, 191, 192, 
"Joseph and His Brethren," Wells's, 

193- 
"Journey through France and 

Italy," Hazlitt's, 219. 
"Julian and Maddalo," Shelley's, 

231. 

"Kabale und Liebe," Schiller's, 38. 

Kalert, Friederich, 37. 

Kant, E., 189. 

Kean, Edmund, 198. 

Keats, John, 12, 34, 120, 129, 143, 
146, 147, 156, 163, 164, 165, 166, 
167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 
174, 176, 178-180, 181,^182, 183, 
184, 199, 208, 216, 2i7,*22o, 235, 
239, 248, 256, 257, 259, 260, 293, 
294, 298, 301, 313, 314, 315. 

Kemble, John, 198. * 

Kilchurn Castle, Wordsworth's son- 
net on, 108. 

"King Stephen," Keats's, 198. 

Klopstock, F. G., 62. 

Kotzebue, A. von, 38-39, 41. 

"Kubla Khan," Coleridge's, 63. 

"Lady of the Lake," Scott's, 113, 

115, 127, 269. 
Laidlaw, William, 72, 73, 158. 



[ 336 ] 



INDEX 



"Lalla Rookh," Moore's, 144, 147, 

239- 

Lamartine, A. de, 19, 251. 

Lamb, Charles, 45, 46, 47, 49, 52, 
56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 78, 
loi, 109, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 
170, 178, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 
188, 189, 192, 195, 197, 198, 200, 
201, 202, 207-208, 210, 211, 241, 
253, 254, 262, 268, 291, 292, 305, 

307- 
Lamb, Mary, 169, 187, 188. 
"Lament of Tasso," Byron's, 225. 
"Lamia," Keats's, 174, 180, 182. 
Landon, Letitia, 19, 155, 239, 241, 

251-252, 253, 254, 260, 262, 281, 

307- 
Landor, Robert Eyres, 220. 
Landor, Walter Savage, 62, 92, 93, 

191, 203, 213, 215, 225, 233- 

236, 238, 287, 307. 
"Laodamia," Wordsworth's, 182, 

287. 
"Lara," Byron's, 34, 138. 
"Lay of the Last Minstrel," Scott's, 

19, 75, 80, 81, 82, 84, 112, 113, 

IIS, 120, 144. 
"Leech-gatherer," Wordsworth's, 

65- 
"Legend of Florence," Hunt's, 233. 
"Legend of Montrose," Scott's, 153. 
L. E. L. See Letitia Landon. 
Leopardi, Giacomo, 195. 
Lessing, G. E., 189, 237. 
Lewis, M. G., 33, 35-36, 37, 4i, 56, 

70, 71, 77, 112, 213, 253, 269, 

270, 271, 281. 
Leyden, John, 71-72, 74, 76, 77, 

78-81, 85, 87, 88, 146, 151. 



Liberal, The, 232-233. 

"Library," Crabbe's, 27. 

"Lights and Shadows of Scottish 

Life," Wilson's, 160. 
"Lines to a Young Ass," Cole- 
ridge's, 270. 
"Lines Written Among the Euga- 

nean Hills," Shelley's, 229. 
Lloyd, Charles, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 

52-53, 60, 62, 66, 90, 98-99, 

165, 167, 171, 182, 216, 254, 268. 
Lockhart, John Gibson, 70, 74, 93, 

112, 151, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161, 

199, 241, 262. 
London Magazine, 156, 161, 168, 

186, 19s, 196, 198-209, 210, 211, 

240, 246, 254, 260. 
Longfellow, H. W., 115, 161. 
Longman's, 113, 187. 
"Lord of the Isles," Scott's, 113, 

122, 143. 
"Lord Soulis," Leyden's, 81. 
Lovell, Robert, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 

62, 95- 
"Loves of the Angels," Moore's, 

147. 
Luttrell, Henry, 129, 130, 131, 

136-137, 138, 143, 148. 
Lyly, John, 192. 
"Lyrical Ballads," Wordsworth's 

and Coleridge's, 20, 24, 39, 51, 

64, 65, 118, 288. 

Macaulay, Lord, 131, 263. 
Mackenzie, Henry, 57. 
Mackintosh, James, 131, 222. 
Macpherson, James, 14, 15, 153, 
267. 



[ 337 ] 



INDEX 



"Madoc," Southey's, 45, 61, 62, 91, 

115- 
Maginn, William, 156, 159. 
Mallet, P., 92. 

"Manfred," Byron's, 34, 227. 
"Marino Faliero," Byron's, 227. 
Marlowe, C, 187, 191, 193, 194, 

196, 253. 

"Marmion," Scott's, 80, 94, 113, 

114, IIS, 127, 239, 271. 
Massinger, P., 186, 187, 191, 192, 

197, 198. 

Mathias, Thomas James, 25, 34. 
Maturin, Charles Robert, 42, 252, 

253, 268. 
"Michael," Wordsworth's, 63, 65, 

loi, 107, 108. 
Middleton, Thomas, 192, 198. 
Mill, John Stuart, 314. 
Millais, J. E., 182. 
Milman, H. H., 134, 137, 156, 220, 

241, 243-244, 245, 253, 261. 
Milton, John, 61, 62, 63, 102, 103, 

104, 106, no, 172, 173, 188, 191, 
212, 217, 223, 296, 297, 304. 

"Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
der," Scott's, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 
76-79, 84, 112, 114. 

Mitford, Mary Russell, 23, 82, 118, 
121, 124, 221, 239, 244, 245, 246, 
263. 

Moir, David Macbeth, 160. 

"Monk," Lewis's, 35-36. 

Montgomery, James, 121-122, 127, 

242, 269. 
"Montorio," Maturin's, 42. 
Moore, Thomas, 34, 48, 68, 114, 

121, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136, 
138, 139, 140-141, 14s, 147, 148, 



165, 168, 173, 223, 235, 239, 240, 

241, 243, 246, 252, 253, 256, 258, 

260, 270, 281, 293, 312. 
Morgan, Lady (Sydney Owenson), 

241. 
Motherwell, William, 76, 83, 162, 

288. 
"Mountain Bard," Hogg's, 73. 
Murray, John, 113, 156, 214, 226, 

257- 
"Mysteries of Udolpho," Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe's, 34, 36, 268. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 116, 163, 213, 

221, 222, 238, 239, 267, 289, 290, 

310. 
"Newspaper," Crabbe's, 27. 
"Nightingale," Coleridge's, 63. 
"Noctes Ambrosianae," 156, 157- 

158. 
"North, Christopher." See John 

Wilson. 
"Northanger Abbey," Austen's, 268, 

274, 310. 
Northcote, J., 166, 259. 
Novalis, 195, 307, 308. 
Novellos, the, 165, 167, 169, 170, 

182, 183, 184. 

"Ode on Dejection," Coleridge's, 91, 

97- 

"Ode on Intimations of Immortal- 
ity," Wordsworth's, 19, 118, 119. 

"Ode to the West Wind," Shelley's, 
224. 

Oehlenschlager, A. G., 247, 250. 

"Old Mortality," Scott's, 153. 

Oliphant, Mrs., 155, 158. 

Oilier, Chas., 165, 166, 171. 



[ 338 ] 



INDEX 



"On a Grecian Urn," Keats's, 176, 
180. 

Opie, Mrs., 62. 

"Osorio" ("Remorse"), Cole- 
ridge's, 54, 60, 134. 

"Ossian," 30, 32, 33, 141, 146, 212, 
248, 266, 274, 307. 

"Otho the Great," Keats's, 170, 
198. 

Otway, Thomas, 186, 197. 

Ovid, 98. 

Owenson, Sydney. See Lady Mor- 
gan. 

"Parish Register," Crabbe's, 121. 

Parnell, Thomas, 13, 15. 

Peacock, Thomas Love, 167, 177, 
180, 222, 250, 272-275, 283. 

Peele Castle, Wordsworth's poem 
on, 119. 

Peele, George, 192, 196. 

"Peter Bell," Wordsworth's, 63. 

Petrarch, F., 225. 

"Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," 
Hood's, 196. 

"Pleasures of Hope," Campbell's, 
30-32, 68, 127. 

"Pleasures of Memory," Rogers's, 
29-30. 

Poe, E. A., 157. 

Pollok, Robert, 162. 

Poole, Thomas, 45, 47, 50, 58. 

Pope, Alexander, 13, 14, 15, 22, 23, 
30, 31, 32, 57, 80, 98, 114, 128, 
129, 134, 135, 138, 142, 148, 170, 
172, 173, 184, 212, 214, 254, 255, 
256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 266, 267, 
269, 276, 291, 292, 295, 296, 297, 
300, 315. 



Porter, Jane, 85, 282. 

Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 262, 

282-283. 
"Prelude," Wordsworth's, 50, 109, 

Pre-Raphaelites, 169, 182, 183, 237, 

303- 

"Prince Athanase," Shelley's, 224. 

Prior, Matthew, 23, 128, 136, 276. 

"Probationary Odes for the Laure- 
ateship," 266. 

Procter, Bryan Waller ("Barry 
Cornwall"), 34, 102, 132, 134, 
156, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 
174, 177, 178, 182, 184, 188, 189, 
190-192, 193, 197, 198, 200, 
208, 216, 217, 218, 225, 239, 240, 
251, 253. 

"Prometheus Unbound," Shelley's, 
181, 229, 232. 

"Prophecy of Dante," Byron's, 223. 

Pulci, L., 215, 216, 233. 

Quarterly Review, 156, 172, 184, 

203, 244, 248, 254, 255. 
"Queen Hynde," Hogg's, 151. 
"Queen Mab," Shelley's, 180. 
"Queen's Wake," Hogg's, 124-126. 
"Quentin Durward," Scott's, 154. 

Racine, Jean, 98, 129, 132, 135, 

228, 291. 
Radcliffe, Mrs. Ann, 33-35, 36, 42, 

82, 89, 152, 180, 213, 252, 268, 

274, 282, 310. 
Ramsay, Allan, 13, 154. 
"Rauber, Die," Schiller's, 37, 38, 

54, 92. 
"Recluse," Wordsworth's, 104-106. 



[ 339 ] 



INDEX 



Reflector, Hunt's, i66. 
"Rejected Addresses,". James and 
Horace Smith's, i66, 266, 269, 

2 75- 
"Reliques," Percy's, 14, 56, 64, 68, 

75, 76, 274. 
"Remorse," Coleridge's. See Osorio. 
"Revolt of Islam," Shelley's, 171, 

313- 
Reynolds, John Hamilton, 165, 166, 

167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 174, 178, 

182, 198, 200, 201, 217, 281, 282. 

"Rhododaphne," Peacock's, 177. 

Richter, J. P., 144. 

Ritson, Joseph, 73. 

Robinson, Henry Crabb, 57, 94, 
213. 

"Rob Roy," Scott's, 153. 

"Roderick," Southey's, 92, loi, 117, 

134- 
Rogers, Samuel, 27, 28, 29, 48, 68, 
79, 112, 117, 124, 129, 130, 132- 

133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 142, 143, 
147, 148, 168, 173, 198, 219, 223, 
258,259, 261, 281, 297,310,311. 

"Rokeby," Scott's, 80, 113, 120, 
122, 126. 

"Rolliad, The," 24. 

Roscoe, William, 255. 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 33, 44, 51, 
52, 54, 70, 89, 100, 268, 274. 

"Rovers," Canning's, 40, 41, 214. 

"Ruined Cottage," Southey's, 52. 

Runge, O., 308. 

Ruskin, John, 182, 183. 

St. Pierre, J. H. B., 33. 
"St. Ronan's Well," Scott's, 154, 
242. 



Sand, George, 276, 310. 

Schiller, J. C. F., 37, 143, 177, 237. , 

Schlegel, A. W. von, 37, 177, 189, j 

222, 223, 289, 290, 291. 
Scott, John, 199, 200, 202, 209. I 
Scott, Sir Walter, 15, 24, 34, 37, 41, 
48, 69-82, 87, 88, 93, 94, 103, 
no, 112-117, 120, 121, 122, 
123, 125, 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 
135, 139, 142, 143, 144, 14s, 146, 
148, 151, 152-155, 156, 158, 
162, 163, 168, 184, 197, 208, 209, 
219, 239, 240, 241, 242, 246, 247, 
258, 259, 260, 262, 263, 269, 270, 
282, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 
299, 301, 303, 306, 310, 312, 
316. 
Severn, Joseph, 165, 166, 167, 168, 
169, 171, 173, 176, 178, 183, 184, 

245- 

Seward, Anna, 23, 24, 26, 32, 77. 

"Shade of Alexander Pope, The," 
26. 

Shakespeare, William, 173, 186, 
188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 
198, 212, 218, 223, 229, 281, 298. 

Sharp, William, 176. 

Shelley, Mary, 170, 231, 233. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 12, 19, 34, 
80, 89, 92, 103, 116, 120, 143, 
146, 147, 156, 163, 164, 165, 167, 
168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176, 178, 
180-181, 182, 183, 184, 192, 
193, 198, 213, 220, 223-225, 227, 
228-231, 232, 234, 235, 238, 
239, 241, 248, 251, 254, 260, 272, 
274, 281, 293, 301, 302, 303, 308, 
312, 315. 

Sheridan, R. B., 39, 130, 288. 



[ 340 ] 



INDEX 



Shirley, James, 196. 

Siddons, Mrs., 198. 

"Simon Lee," Wordsworth's, 65. 

"Sleep and Poetry," Keats's, 174. 

Smith, Adam, 30. 

Smith, Charlotte, 20, 21, 116. 

Smith, James and Horace, 165, 166, 
201, 269, 271, 

Smollett, T. G., 185. 

"Solitary Reaper," Wordsworth's, 
86. 

"Song at the Feast of Brougham 
.Castle," Wordsworth's, 108, 119. 

"Sorrows of Werther," Goethe's, 
144, 228, 262, 274. 

Sotheby, William, 123, 221. 

Southey, Robert, 15, 23, 38, 43, 44, 
45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, SI, 54, 55- 
56, 58, 59, 60-62, 64, 66, 78, 86, 
89, 90, 91-95, 98, 102, 113, 118, 
122, 131, 134, 144, 161, 180, 187, 
212, 213, 215, 216, 234, 240, 258, 
260, 261, 268, 269, 270, 271, 275, 
277, 281, 301, 307, 312. 

"Specimens of English Dramatic 
Poets," etc.. Lamb's, 187. 

Spencer, W. R., 39, 130, 131, 133, 
135, 138, 139, 148, 270. 

Spenser, Edmund, 153, 172, 173, 
17s, 218, 243, 281, 293, 296, 298, 

307. 
Stevenson, Robert L., 83, 158. 
"Stories from the Italian Poets," 

Hunt's, 233. 
"Story of Rimini," Hunt's, 171, 

173, 174, 223, 233, 256. 
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 118. 
Swift, Jonathan, 114, 128, 258, 272, 

276, 277, 279, 280. 



Swinburne, A. C, 178, 183, 265. 
Symons, Arthur, 296, 297, 298. 

"Tales from Blackwood," 156-157, 

253- 
"Tales from Shakespeare," Charles 

and Mary Lamb's, 187. 
"Tales of Wonder," Lewis's, 56, 70. 
Talfourd, Sir Thomas Noon, 167, 

199, 201, 209. 
"Talisman," Scott's, 154, 155. 
"Task," Cowper's, 21, 89. 
Tasso, T., 225, 233, 234. 
Taylor, William, 24, 55, 56, 62, 69, 

213. 
Tennyson, Lord, 15, 116, 182, 263, 

292, 295, 296, 303. 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 34, 

159, 267, 272, 283. 
"Thalaba," Southey's, 61, 91, 313. 
Thelwall, John, 46, 47, 50, 58, 268. 
Thomson, James, 14, 15, 26, 84, 85, 

198, 212, 307. 
"Three Graves," Coleridge's, 63, 64. 
Thurlow, Lord, 220. 
Tieck, L., 253, 307. 
"Tin tern Abbey, Lines Composed 

above," Wordsworth's, 53, 81. 
Tourneur, C, 187. 
"Triumph of Life," Shelley's, 224. 
"Triumphs of Temper," Hayley's, 

22. 
Turner, J. M,, 220. 
"Two Foscari," Byron's, 227. 

Uhland, J. L., 115, 

"Urania," W. R. Spencer's, 39, 139. 



[ 341 ] 



INDEX 



"Vala," Blake's, 313. 

"Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," 

Moore's, 173. 
Veitch, G. S., 73, 83, 84, 85. 
"Village," Crabbe's, 27-28. 
"Vision of Judgment," Byron's, 215, 

233- 
Vitet, L., 191. 
Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 30, 132, 256. 

Wade, Thomas, 196, 220, 221. 
"Waggoner," Wordsworth's, 119. 
Wainwright, T. G., 201. 
"Wallenstein," Coleridge's, 41. 
Walpole, Horace, 24, 36. 
Warton, Joseph, 34, 254, 258. 
Warton, Thomas, 14, 20, 29, 33, 

48, 49, 82, 115, 208, 267, 288, 

296, 300. 
Watchman, Coleridge's, 45. 
Watier's, 130. 

"Wat Tyler," Southey's, 50. 
"Waverley," Scott's, 151, 152. 
Webb, Cornelius, 156, 165, 170, 

171. 
Weber, Veit, 37. 
Webster, John, 187, 191, 192, 194, 

196, 197, 242. 
Wedgewood brothers, 66. 
Wells, C. J., 165, 167, 177, 178, 

182, 192, 193, 197, 217, 245. 
Werner, Z., 237, 253. 



West, Benjamin, 244, 245. 

White, Lydia, 131. 

"White Doe of Rylstone," Words- 
worth's, 103, 108, 113, 119, 120. 

Wilson, J. G., 13, 74. 

Wilson, John ("Christopher 
North"), 87, 90, 100-101, 152, 
156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 185, 
272. 

"Witch of Atlas," Shelley's, 216, 
220. 

Woodhouselee, Lord, 37, 54. 

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 47, 53, 62, 
96, 100, loi, 102, 113. 

Wordsworth, William, 13, 15, 22, 
23, 24, 27, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 
49, 50, 51, 52, 53-54, 56, 57, 58, 
59, 62, 63-66, 68, 81, 85, 86, 87, 
88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 
99, 100, 101-111, 113, 114, 115, 
116, 117-120, 122, 129, 132, 134, 
138, 139, 143, 148, 151, 152, 156, 
158, 163, 182, 184, 191, 197, 198, 
204, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213, 219, 
222, 234, 240, 255, 258, 259, 260, 
261, 263, 269, 270, 271, 272, 288, 
289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 297, 298, 
301, 302, 303, 307, 308, 311, 312, 
313, 314. 

"World Before the Flood," Mont- 
gomery's, 242. 

"Zapolya," Coleridge's, 188. 



[ 342 ] 



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